iverside  Literature  Series 


lOORi 


. 


. 


• 


COPYRIGHT    1891,    BY    M.    P.    RICE 

ABRAHAM   LINCOLN   IN   isr,4 


ftifcerstoe  literature 


A  SHORT  LIFE  OF 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 


BY 
CHARLES  W.  MOORES 

FORMERLY  PRESIDENT    OF   THE   BOARD    OF   SCHOOL   COMMISSIONERS 
INDIANAPOLIS 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS        ' 


BOSTON     NEW  YORK    CHICAGO 

HOTJGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

Cambridge 


COPYRIGHT,   I90Q.   BY   CHARLES  W.   MOORES 
Ai.L  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


PREFACE 

EVERY  American,  over  eight  years  old,  ought  to 
know  the  story  of  Abraham  Lincoln's  life.  More  than 
this,  every  American  ought  to  know  the  best  of  Lin 
coln's  writings.  Above  all,  every  American  ought  to 
know  the  man,  Abraham  Lincoln.  To  give  to  children 
an  understanding  of  his  great  life,  an  appreciation  of 
the  simplicity  and  purity  of  his  literary  style,  and  a  love 
of  the  man,  has  been  the  purpose  of  this  little  book. 
The  effort  has  been  to  do  this  without  departing  from 
the  dignity  which  maturer  minds  demand  in  the  pre 
sentation  of  a  personality  that  has  won  the  love  of  us 
all.  At  the  same  time,  the  picture  were  incomplete 
without  a  portrayal  of  the  humor  that  saved  Lincoln 
from  the  madness  to  which  the  burden  he  carried 
might  have  driven  him. 

The  chapters  which  are  not  essentially  political  in 
their  character,  and  therefore  do  not  call  for  an  elemen 
tary  knowledge  of  American  history,  have  been  found 
suited  to  the  use  of  children  in  the  fifth  and  sixth 
grades ;  while,  upon  a  thorough  test,  the  whole  book 
has  proved  well  adapted  for  sight-reading  in  seventh 
and  eighth  grades.  This  test  has  shown  the  fulfillment 
of  the  author's  purpose  to  give  to  the  children  a  simple 
story  of  Lincoln's  life,  to  stimulate  a  new  interest  in 
his  writings,  and  to  lead  to  a  better  understanding  oi 
Lincoln,  the  man. 

"A  blend  of  mirth  and  sadness,  smiles  and  tears ; 
A  quaint  knight-errant  of  the  pioneers  ; 
A  homely  hero  born  of  star  and  sod  ; 
A  Peasant  Prince  ;  a  Masterpiece  of  God." 

464405 


CONTENTS 

I.  THE  LINCOLNS  SETTLE  IN  KENTUCKY    .        .  „      1 

II.  MOVING  TO  INDIANA          .  7 

III.  A  BACKWOODS  BOYHOOD  .    13 

IV.  A  STRANGE  EDUCATION 19 

V.  THE  LAND  OF  FULL-GROWN  MEN          „  .25 

VI.  LAWYER  AND  LAWMAKER  „  32 

VII.  MARRIAGE  AND  CONGRESS     .....    38 

VIII.  RIDING  THE  CIRCUIT  45 

IX.  THE  REPUBLICAN  PARTY  is  BORN         .        .        .52 

X.  THE  DEBATES  WITH  DOUGLAS  ...         59 

XI.  THE  NOMINATION 68 

XII.  THE  ELECTION 77 

XIII.  THE  PRESIDENCY 85 

XIV.  WAR  BEGINS 93 

XV.  A  PEOPLE'S  SORROW       ......  100 

XVI.  PRESIDENT  LINCOLN  AT  HOME  ...       107 

XVII.  HIGH  TIDE 115 

XVIII.  PEACE  „       123 


f 


THE  LIFE  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 
FOR  BOYS  AND  GIRLS 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   LINCOLNS    SETTLE   IN    KENTUCKY 

ON  the  eastern  slope  of  the  Allegheny  Mountains, 
not  far  from  the  western  border  of  Virginia,  was  the 
farm  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  grandfather  of  President 
Lincoln.  This  elder  Lincoln  was  one  of  a  family  of 
Pennsylvania  Quakers,  who  about  the  time  George 
Washington  was  born  had  settled  in  Virginia.  He  had 
prospered  and  had  become  a  man  of  influence.  Doubt 
less  because  he  was  a  Quaker  he  had  not  joined  Wash 
ington's  army,  although  he  had  a  younger  brother  who 
was  an  officer  in  the  Virginia,  troops. 

The  Revolutionary  War  had  been  going  on  for  five 
years  and  was  now  nearing  its  close.  Of  the  soldiers 
who  had  often  felt  the  thrill  that  comes  to  those  who 
hear  the  sound  of  fife  and  drum  and  bugle,  many 
were  beginning  to  hear  the  call  of  the  frontier  beyond 
the  mountains,  which  Washington  in  his  boyhood  had 
explored.  As  their  time  of  service  expired,  it  was  but 
natural  that  these  hardy  veterans  should  see  in  the 
unsettled  lands  to  the  westward  a  field  rich  in  adven 
ture  and  tempting  in  its  rewards.  From  Virginia  the 
line  of  travel  to  this  land  of  promise  lay  southwest 
erly,  along  the  eastern  slope  of  the  Alleghenies,  up  the 
Shenandoah  Valley,  directly  past  the  Lincoln  farm  in 


.  V  :  V^BRAHAM  LINCOLN 


aia  •  Ceunjty,  :to  the  Cumberland  Gap,  and 
'th'eh'ce*  into  'tne*  blue-grass  country  of  Kentucky. 

As  the  endless  caravan  of  canvas-covered  wagons 
crept  up  the  long,  uneven  slope  on  the  Virginia  side 
of  the  mountain  range,  hundreds  of  these  venturesome 
pioneers  passed  the  Lincoln  farm,  each  company,  no 
doubt,  shouting  to  the  less  adventurous  farmer,  as  they 
passed,  a  playful  invitation  to  "sell  out  and  come 
along."  The  elder  Abraham  Lincoln  soon  caught  the 
spirit  and  joined  the  procession  of  emigrants  that  for 
the  next  fifty  years  was  to  take  its  winding  course  over 
the  Wilderness  Trail  to  the  new  West. 

In  1780,  Kentucky  was  a  vast  solitude,  inhabited  by 
wild  beasts  and  a  few  scattered  bands  of  Indians.  Its 
trees  and  streams,  its  wild  ravines  and  sweeping  val 
leys,  lay  before  the  wondering  eyes  of  the  emigrants  as 
they  came  down  the  western  slope  of  the  great  moun 
tain  barrier,  —  a  picture  of  indescribable  beauty,  a 
picture  in  which  there  were  no  signs  of  human  life,  no 
houses,  or  schools,  or  churches,  or  bridges,  or  roads,  or 
fields  of  grain.  It  was  a  paradise  just  as  God's  hand  had 
left  it.  And  yet  the  struggle  that  was  going  on  there 
between  Daniel  Boone  and  his  comrades  in  adventure 
and  the  few  thousand  savages  who  claimed  this  paradise 
as  their  own,  gave  to  Kentucky  the  romantic  name  of 
"the  dark  and  bloody  ground,"  and  offered  promise 
of  excitement  and  adventure,  as  well  as  a  free  home, 
to  all  who  might  leave  civilization  behind  them  and 
brave  the  hardships  of  the  Wilderness  Trail. 

Abraham  Lincoln  the  elder  was  counted  a  rich  man 
when  he  took  the  seventeen  thousand  dollars  that  he 
got  for  his  Virginia  farm  and  bought  from  the  govern 
ment  his  three  plantations  in  Kentucky.  He  became 
the  owner  of  seventeen  hundred  acres  in  three  tracts, 


THE  LINCOLNS  SETTLE   IN   KENTUCKY      3 

located  in  the  Green  River  Valley,  and  near  where 
Covington  and  Louisville  are  now.  To  the  Louisville 
region,  then  a  pathless  wilderness,  he  brought  his  wife 
and  children,  the  youngest  of  them  two  years  old.  Here 
he  thought  to  find  the  fortune  that  his  pluck  and  enter 
prise  would  bring  him.  He  was  a  friend  of  Daniel 
Boone,  the  Indian  fighter,  and  his  wife  was  a  cousin  of 
Boone.  The  Lincoln s  knew  this  land  by  its  forbidding 
name,  "  the  dark  and  bloody  ground,"  but  they  were 
not  afraid.  The  boys,  no  doubt,  had  their  dreams  of 
wild  game,  and  of  the  scalping-knife  and  tomahawk, 
and  they  went  into  the  unknown  country  full  of  faith 
in  the  fortune  they  were  to  win  there.  But  the  father's 
fortune  was  to  die  at  the  hands  of  the  Indians,  leaving 
his  widow  and  five  young  children  to  make  their  way 
in  the  backwoods,  with  no  one  to  care  for  them,  with 
no  chance  for  an  education,  and  with  property  from 
which  they  could  not  make  their  living.  Whatever  value 
their  hundreds  of  acres  had,  depended  on  their  being 
cleared  and  planted.  The  death  of  the  father  was  the  end 
of  their  great  hopes,  and  to  the  Lincoln  boys,  who  were 
scattered  and  put  out  to  work  wherever  they  might 
find  a  job,  Kentucky  was  indeed  a  "  dark  and  bloody 
ground."  The  lands,  such  as  they  were,  went  by  law 
to  the  eldest  son,  Mordecai. 

The  youngest  son,  Thomas,  now  six  years  old,  became 
"  a  wandering  laboring  boy,"  and  did  the  roughest  kind 
of  farm-work  for  such  pay  as  men  cared  to  give  him. 
There  were  no  schools  where  he  could  be  taught,  and 
he  never  learned  to  read  or  write  until  his  wife  taught 
him  to  scratch  the  letters  of  his  name.  He  was  a  famous 
wrestler,  and  he  was  strong  and  brave.  He  could  tell 
a  funny  story,  and,  in  his  happy-go-lucky  way,  he 
won  everybody's  good  will,  In  his  memory  he  carried 


4  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

a  picture,  that  he  never  lost,  of  the  morning  in  the 
Kentucky  clearing  when  the  Indian  killed  his  father, 
and  his  big  brother  Mordecai,  fourteen  years  old,  ran  to 
the  cabin  for  the  rifle  and  shot  his  father's  murderer. 

Thomas  Lincoln  learned  the  carpenter's  trade,  after 
a  fashion,  in  the  shop  of  Joseph  Hanks.  There  he  fell 
in  love  with  his  cousin,  Nancy  Hanks,  whom  he  mar 
ried  —  a  tall,  frail,  but  charming  girl,  with  dark  hair 
and  dark,  sparkling  eyes.  She  was  in  many  ways  like 
her  son.  She  read  books  when  she  could  get  them,  par 
ticularly  the  Bible,  arid  she  remembered  what  she  read. 
She  saw  the  funny  side  of  life  and  she  always  enjoyed 
a  good  story.  Yet  she  was  often  melancholy.  She  had 
not  strength  enough  for  the  hardships  she  had  to  bear, 
and  her  short  life  had  little  happiness  in  it. 

The  Lincolns  began  their  housekeeping  in  a  shed  that 
afterward  was  used  as  a  stable  in  an  alley  in  the  village 
of  Elizabethtown.  Here  their  little  girl  Nancy  was 
born.  "  Tom  "  Lincoln  was  not  a  very  good  carpenter. 
In  a  community  where  the  neighbors  were  as  able  as  he 
to  make  the  simple  furniture  and  rude  buildings  they 
needed,  it  is  not  strange  that  he  failed.  He  had  followed 
no  steady  work  since  his  father's  death  had  thrown  him 
upon  the  world,  and  while  he  was  not  discontented  or 
idle,  he  was  restless.  So  he  gave  up  his  trade  and  un 
dertook  farming.  Qn  Nolin's  Creek,  a  dozen  miles  from 
where  his  friends  and  neighbors  lived,  and  about  sixty 
miles  south  of  Louisville,  he  started  to  cut  out  the  trees 
and  build  himself  a  house  of  logs.  This  was  a  one-room 
affair,  with  110  door  to  keep  out  the  cold  and  storm,  and 
with  no  window  to  let  in  the  light.  There  were  open 
spaces  between  the  logs  that  made  its  walls.  The  floor 
was  the  bare  earth,  pounded  hard.  In  its  one  unfur 
nished  room  there  was  no  picture  except  that  of  the 


THE  LINCOLNS  SETTLE  IN  KENTUCKY      5 

barren  patches  of  grass  and  weeds  that  the  family  could 
see  through  the  open  doorway.  They  slept  on  a  bed  of 
skins  on  the  floor,  and  in  the  winter  they  sat  shivering 
about  the  fireplace  while  Tom  told  stories  or  Nancy 
read  aloud.  Here,  on  February  12,  1809,  their  sec 
ond  child,  Abraham  Lincoln,  was  born. 

There  are  pictures  of  this  log  house  on  the  Rock 
Spring  Farm,  near  Nolin's  Creek,  but  the  house  was 
torn  down  and  the  logs  were  used  in  other  buildings 
long  before  the  pictures  were  made.  The  American 
people  have  bought  the  farm  and  rebuilt  the  cabin  out 
of  some  of  the  same  logs,  and  mean  to  keep  it  always 
in  memory  of  the  great  American  who  was  born  there 
a  hundred  years  ago. 

The  Lincolns  soon  found  that  they  could  not  make 
a  living  on  the  place.  So  they  moved  again  and  built 
themselves  another  log  cabin  near  Knob  Creek,  where 
the  children  and  the  tired  mother  were  made  more 
comfortable.  Little  Nancy  was  now  old  enough  to  go  to 
school.  They  sent  her,  with  her  four-year-old  brother 
for  company,  to  be  taught  for  a  few  months  by  an  Irish 
wanderer,  Zachariah  liiney.  Of  him  and  their  next 
teacher,  Caleb  Hazel,  nothing  is  known  except  thut 
they  had  no  regular  school,  that  they  knew  very  little 
beyond  the  A,  B,  C's,  and  that  they  found  in  the  little 
Lincoln  boy  a  mind  that  was  eager  to  learn  and  a  dis 
position  to  ask  questions  that  must  have  interested 
them  and  taxed  their  patience  greatly.  AVe  are  told 
that  in  the  evenings,  while  other  children  slept,  Abe 
was  bringing  spicewood  branches  to  make  a  blaze  in 
the  open  fireplace  so  that  his  mother  could  read  to  him 
and  help  him  puzzle  out  the  letters  by  the  firelight. 

The  boy  Lincoln  was  beginning  to  get  an  education. 
What  he  did  not  learn  from  the  two  wandering  teach- 


6  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ers  and  from  his  mother,  he  picked  up  by  asking  ques 
tions  of  every  man  that  passed  the  house,  and  by 
listening  to  the  preachers  who  rode  horseback  through 
the  country  and  preached  the  gospel  wherever  they 
could  find  an  audience  by  the  wayside.  The  lad  remem 
bered  all  that  he  heard,  and  repeated  to  his  mother 
and  to  the  boys  and  girls  of  his  acquaintance  the  sub 
stance,  and  often  the  very  words,  of  the  sermons  of 
these  traveling  preachers.  The  preachers  knew  scarcely 
more  than  their  hearers,  but  they  rode  over  hundreds 
of  miles  giving  comfort  and  help  to  those  that  needed 
it,  and  keeping  the  frontier  in  touch  with  the  rest  of 
the  world.  One  of  them,  David  Elkin,  was  a  frequent 
guest  at  the  house,  and  won  the  admiration  of  the 
little  backwoodsman,  Abraham  Lincoln. 

The  Lincoln  farm  —  if  we  may  call  it  a  farm,  with 
its  trees  and  heavy  underbrush,  its  stumps  and  patches 
£>f  rock  —  was  barren  enough,  and  the  little  family 
lived  mainly  on  the  wild  animals  that  the  father  shot 
and  the  fish  that  they  could  catch  in  the  creeks  near 
by.  One  day  Abraham,  now  about  five  years  old,  had 
been  trying  to  make  himself  useful  and  was  coming 
home  proudly  swinging  a  fish  from  his  line.  Near  the 
house  he  met  an  old  soldier  and,  as  he  stopped  to  ask 
his  usual  questions  of  the  man,  there  flashed  upon  his 
memory  a  command  his  mother  had  once  given  him, 
that  he  must  always  be  kind  to  the  soldiers.  Instantly 
he  gave  the  man  his  fish  and  went  home  empty-handed, 
disappointed  that  he  had  no  fish  to  show,  yet  happy 
that  he  had  done  a  patriotic  act. 


CHAPTER  II 

MOVING   TO   INDIANA 

AT  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  Ken 
tucky  was  no  longer  a  wilderness.  Through  Cumber 
land  Gap  and  down  the  Ohio  River,  thousands  of  fami 
lies  had  been  moving  in  from  the  East.  Already  the 
emigrants  from  Virginia  and  Maryland  had  brought 
with  them  a  multitude  of  slaves  who  were  to  cut  down 
the  forests  and  plow  the  virgin  soil  and  furnish  for  the 
new  State  the  foundation  for  a  slave  civilization  and 
a  landed  aristocracy.  From  the  beginning  the  people 
of  Kentucky  were  set  apart  in  two  classes.  One  of 
these  classes  consisted  of  those  who  could  afford  to 
have  slaves  to  do  their  hard  labor,  and  who  in  this 
way  found  time  for  themselves  and  their  children  to 
learn  reading  and  writing.  As  the  country  became 
cleared  and  settled,  these  slave-owners  were  able  to 
keep  abreast  of  the  times  by  means  of  travel  and  edu 
cation.  And  because  they  had  time  and  money  and 
book-learning,  they  became  the  governing  class  in  the 
new  State.  The  other  class  was  made  up  of  those  who 
were  too  poor  to  own  slaves.  They  spent  their  days, 
axe  in  hand,  cutting  down  the  trees  and  getting  the 
ground  ready  for  the  plow,  and  their  nights  in  the 
heavy  sleep  that  comes  to  those  who  work  to  the  limit 
of  their  strength.  When  they  needed  food,  the  rod  and 
gun  brought  them  plenty  of  fish  and  game.  Their  boys 
and  girls  had  to  share  in  the  endless  labor  as  soon  as 
they  were  old  enough  to  do  anything.  The  time  of  a 
boy  of  seven  was  too  valuable  to  permit  of  his  spend- 


8  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ing  much  of  it  in  school.  These  two  great  classes,  the 
owners  of  slaves  and  the  "  poor  whites,"  had  little  in 
common.  Wherever  there  were  slaves  the  poor  whites 
had  small  chance  to  get  ahead  in  the  world. 

Thomas  Lincoln  was  too  poor  to  be  a  slave-owner, 
and  so  long  as  he  had  to  live  in  a  community  where 
slaves  were  doing  without  pay  the  only  kind  of  work 
that  he  knew  how  to  do,  he  had  no  reason  to  expect 
that  he  could  get  ahead.  It  is  certain  that  slavery  had 
something  to  do  with  his  failures  in  Kentucky,  and  it 
was  partly  on  account  of  slavery  that  he  left  Kentucky 
a  few  years  later  to  settle  in  the  free  State  of  Indiana. 

A  hundred  miles  to  the  northward  was  a  newer 
country  where  there  were  no  slaves,  where  the  want  of 
an  education  was  no  disadvantage  to  a  man,  and  where 
there  were  no  class  distinctions  between  the  rich  and 
the  poor.  This  new  State  had  chosen  for  its  great  seal 
the  picture  of  a  pioneer,  axe  in  hand,  clearing  the 
forest,  with  a  buffalo  in  the  background  making  way 
for  the  advance  of  civilization.  What  made  it  pecul 
iarly  the  poor  man's  land  of  promise  was  that  it  had 
just  written  into  its  new  constitution  a  law  that  should 
make  every  immigrant  sure  that  he  could  earn  his 
daily  bread  without  competing  with  slave  labor.  In 
that  constitution  there  was  a  sentence  that  in  years  to 
come  was  to  exert  its  influence  upon  Abraham  Lin 
coln's  public  career.  It  read  as  follows  :  "  As  the  hold 
ing  any  part  of  the  human  creation  in  slavery  .  .  . 
can  only  originate  in  usurpation  and  tyranny,  no  alter 
ation  of  this  constitution  shall  ever  take  place  so  as  to 
introduce  slavery  ...  in  this  State." 

In  the  summer  of  1816,  the  year  that  Indiana  came 
into  the  Union,  Tom  Lincoln  sold  his  possessions, 
and  building  himself  a  raft,  put  his  little  fortune  on 


MOVING  TO  INDIANA  9 

board  and  floated  with  it  down  the  Rolling  Fork  and 
the  Salt  River  to  the  Ohio  ;  and  on  down  the  Ohio  to 
the  mouth  of  Anderson's  Creek  on  the  Indiana  side. 
Plunging  fifteen  miles  into  the  forest,  lie  found  at 
Little  Pigeon  Creek  the  spot  where  he  planned  to 
build  his  new  home.  He  walked  back  to  the  Kentucky 
cabin,  and  in  the  late  fall  brought  his  family  across  the 
country  on  the  backs  of  two  borrowed  horses  to  the 
banks  of  the  Ohio.  Crossing  the  stream,  he  and  his  boy, 
Abe,  began  on  the  north  shore  to  cut  a  road  through 
the  densely  wooded  forest  of  walnut  and  hickory  toward 
their  new  home.  In  these  woods  the  children  saw  many 
strange  wild  animals.  Here  was  the  home  of  the  deer 
and  the  wild  cat,  the  wolf  and  the  bear.  In  the  fallen 
leaves  and  undergrowth  crept  copperheads  and  rat 
tlesnakes,  while  in  the  shadow  of  the  trees  they  saw 
more  birds  than  the  little  boy  and  girl  could  count. 
Stately,  solitary  cranes  waded  in  the  shallow  water  of 
the  creek ;  overhead  were  flocks  of  screaming  green 
and  yellow  paroquets ;  and  in  the  more  open  places 
occasional  wild  turkeys  were  seen.  No  doubt  the  long 
ride  on  horseback  across  northern  Kentucky,  the  first 
vision  of  the  Ohio  River  as  it  swept  between  its  scarlet 
and  golden  hillsides,  and  the  first  serious  efforts  witt 
the  pioneer's  axe  to  open  a  way  through  which  the 
iiorses  could  carry  their  goods  to  the  new  home,  made 
impressions  upon  the  memory  of  the  little  emigrant 
that  he  never  wholly  forgot. 

Years  afterward,  in  telling  about  this  boyhood  home 
Lincoln  described  it  as  "  a  wild  region  with  many  bears 
and  other  wild  animals  still  in  the  woods."  Speaking 
of  this  seven-year-old  boy  who  had  just  come  into  In 
diana,  he  said  :  "  He  settled  in  an  unbroken  forest,  and 
the  clearing  away  of  surplus  wood  was  the  great  task 


10  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ahead.  Abraham,  though  very  young,  was  large  of  his 
age,  and  had  an  axe  put  into  his  hands  at  once ;  and 
from  that  time  till  within  his  twenty-third  year  he  was 
almost  constantly  handling  that  most  useful  instru 
ment." 

It  was  indeed  the  beginning  of  civilization  in  that 
part  of  Indiana.  The  nearest  neighbors  were  some 
miles  away,  but  they  lent  a  helping  hand  whenever  it 
was  needed.  The  Lincolns  were  utteTly  poor,  but  no 
poorer  probably  than  the  rest  were.  And  all  were  rich 
in  the  spirit  of  neighborliness  that  made  each  new 
comer  welcome  to  the  frontier  community,  and  joined 
with  him  to  build  his  cabin  and  protect  his  household 
from  illness  and  want  and  danger  of  all  kinds. 

The  prospect  of  beginning  life  again  in  the  thick 
woods,  in  November,  without  any  sort  of  shelter  and 
with  no  white  settlement  near  by,  must  have  fright 
ened  the  young  mother-  But  she  had  a  husband  who 
never  lost  his  courage  and  a  boy  and  a  girl  whom  she 
loved  dearly ;  and  loneliness  was  not  a  new  experience 
to  her.  It  was  too  late  to  build  a  real  house  to  live 
in  during  their  first  winter,  so  they  had  to  make  out 
of  saplings  what  was  called  a  half-faced  camp.  Three 
of  its  four  sides  were  of  poles  covered  as  well  as  possi 
ble  with  dead  leaves  and  brush,  and  the  fourth  side 
was  open  to  the  weather,  except  as  it  was  protected 
by  the  bonfire  that  burned  day  and  night  before  the 
opening.  They  had  no  matches ;  so  the  fire  must  be 
watched  and  kept  alive,  or  the  woodsman  must  start 
another  by  a  very  slow  process,  with  flint  and  steel. 
Indiana  winters  are  sometimes  bitter  —  that  winter  the 
temperature  fell  to  eleven  degrees  below  zero.  Winds 
sweep  fiercely  along  the  Ohio  valley  and  the  snow 
drifts  deep  on  the  hillsides.  We  can  picture  the  boy 


MOVING  TO  INDIANA  11 

and  girl  as  they  lay  by  night  on  the  hard  earth  inside 
their  half-faced  camp,  with  their  feet  toward  the  blaz 
ing  fire,  and  enjoyed  the  dreamless  sleep  that  their 
tired  little  bodies  had  earned,  while  Tom  Lincoln,  the 
father,  listened  to  the  howl  of  the  storm  and,  hearing 
the  cry  of  the  wolf  somewhere  in  the  darkness,  knew 
that  he  must  keep  up  the  fire  or  harm  would  come. 

Without  near  neighbors  and  without  the  ordinary 
comforts,  the  Lincolns  found  life  a  serious  affair.  There 
was  no  time  for  play  and  little  chance  for  learning,  as 
books  were  lacking,  too.  But  there  were  trees  to  be  cut 
down  ;  and  there  was  underbrush  to  burn,  a  well  to  dig, 
a  garden  to  get  ready  for  the  spring  planting,  and  plans 
to  make  for  the  real  log  house  that  they  would  build  as 
soon  as  winter  was  gone.  When  the  weather  kept  them 
within  the  camp  and  close  to  the  fireside,  the  father 
would  frighten  the  boy  and  girl  with  his  story  of  how 
the  Indians  had  shot  their  grandfather,  but  he  would 
keep  up  their  courage  by  pretending  that  there  were 
no  Indians  left  in  the  Little  Pigeon  country ;  and  the 
children's  mother  would  read  to  them  out  of  her  Bible 
the  stories  that  the  boy  never  forgot.  So,  because  they 
had  one  another,  they  were  happy  and  unafraid. 

"  At  this  place,"  Lincoln  wrote  of  himself  years  later, 
"Abraham  took  an  early  start  as  a  hunter  which  was 
never  much  improved  afterward.  A  few  days  before 
the  completion  of  his  eighth  year,  in  the  absence  of  his 
father,  a  flock  of  wild  turkeys  approached  the  new  log 
cabin,  and  Abraham  with  a  rifle  gun,  standing  inside, 
shot  through  a  crack  and  killed  one  of  them.  He  has 
never  since  pulled  a  trigger  on  any  larger  game." 

There  was  no  place  where  clothes  could  be  bought 
for  the  children,  nor  was  there  any  money  to  spend  on 
them.  Abe's  cap  was  of  coonskin,  the  tail  hanging  down 


12  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

behind  for  beauty.  His  shoes  —  when  he  wore  any 
—  were  moccasins  fashioned  by  his  mother's  delicate 
hands  out  of  deerskin,  and  his  trousers  were  of  deer 
skin,  too.  A  shirt  of  home-made  linsey-woolsey  com 
pleted  his  outfit.  Stockings  he  never  wore  until  he  was 
a  grown  man.  Lincoln  has  described  the  slipperiness 
of  the  deerskin  moccasins  and  trousers  when  he  got 
wet ;  and  how,  with  all  their  stretching,  the  deerskin 
trousers  never  quite  covered  his  long  brown  legs. 

Food,  except  fish  and  game,  was  hard  to  find,  and 
without  flour  or  meal,  and  without  a  stove,  it  was  hard 
to  prepare.  It  is  not  strange  that  the  hungry  boy  said 
in  his  quaint  way,  as  his  father  asked  a  blessing  on  the 
dinner  of  baked  potatoes,  "  Dad,  I  call  these  mighty 
poor  blessings." 


CHAPTER  III 

A    BACKWOODS    BOYHOOD 

THE  next  year  the  Lincolns  were  able  to  put  up  a 
new  log  cabin.  This  was  at  least  a  safer  place  to  live 
in  than  the  half-faced  camp.  This  cabin  had  neither 
window,  nor  door,  nor  floor.  The  children  slept  011  a 
bed  of  leaves  in  the  loft,  which  they  reached  by  climb 
ing  a  row  of  pegs  driven  into  the  wall.  The  bed  down 
stairs  was  built  by  driving  a  forked  stake  into  the  earth, 
near  the  corner  of  the  room,  and  laying  a  pole  from 
this  stake  across  to  each  of  two  walls.  On  these  cross- 
poles  were  laid  rough  boards,  which  were  made  soft 
and  comfortable  by  covering  them  with  leaves  and 
clothing  and  the  skins  of  wild  animals.  Such  other 
furniture  as  they  had,  Tom  Lincoln  made  out  of  the 
forest  timber  with  his  simple  woodsman's  tools. 

Here,  for  another  year,  the  mother  suffered  from  the 
exposure  for  which  she  was  so  little  fitted  and  against 
which  she  was  so  ill-protected.  Then  came  a  dread  dis 
ease  which  struck  down  people  and  cattle  alike.  From 
this  plague,  there  being  no  physician  within  thirty 
miles  to  care  for  her,  Nancy  Lincoln  died.  Father  and 
son  cut  down  a  tree  and  out  of  the  green  timber  built 
a  rough  box  for  her  burial.  In  the  woods  near  by  they 
made  her  a  grave  and  laid  her  to  rest. 

Not  long  before  this,  cousins  had  come  from  Ken 
tucky  to  live  near  them.  Some  of  these  cousins  also 
died  of  the  plague,  and  so  there  were  other  graves  to 
dig,  and  strange  boxes  for  the  boy  to  help  fashion. 
The  children  became  familiar  with  the  mystery  of 


14  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

death.  Nancy  and  Abe  were  now  eleven  and  nine  years 
old,  too  young  to  know  how  to  make  the  home  com 
fortable,  and  too  lonely  to  keep  up  the  father's  spirits. 
It  seemed  impossible  for  the  disheartened  man  to  give 
them  proper  clothing  and  food.  The  cabin  continued 
doorless  and  windowless  and  forlorn. 

Abe  was  a  most  affectionate  child,  and  the  idea  of 
leaving  the  dead  mother  alone  in  those  dreadful  woods, 
with  no  religious  service,  and  no  prayer  except  the 
unexpressed  cry  from  his  own  heart,  was  more  than 
he  could  bear.  In  some  way  he  had  learned  to  write  a 
fair  hand.  He  painfully  wrote  out  a  letter  and  gave  it 
to  a  traveler  into  Kentucky  to  be  delivered,  whenever 
he  could  be  found,  to  the  missionary  preacher,  David 
Elkin,  who  had  been  their  friend  years  before.  Many 
months  afterward  the  good  preacher  found  his  way  to 
the  settlement  on  Little  Pigeon  Creek  and  preached 
the  funeral  sermon  by  the  grave  of  Nancy  Hanks 
Lincoln,  paying  to  her  memory  the  tribute  of  praise 
that  the  little  boy  had  hungered  to  hear.  To  this  ser 
vice  came  women,  on  horseback,  from  neighboring  set 
tlements,  carrying  their  children  on  the  saddle-bow, 
while  the  men  trudged  beside  them  through  the  woods. 
And  from  that  day  these  neighbors  kept  in  their 
friendly  sympathy  the  serious,  odd-looking  boy,  under 
standing  his  sorrow  and  wondering  what  dreams  there 
were  in  the  depths  of  his  mysterious  eyes. 

Things  went  from  bad  to  worse,  until  it  began  to 
look  as  if  the  family  would  be  scattered,  as  Thomas 
Lincoln  and  his  brothers  and  sisters  had  been  thirty 
years  before.  Then  there  came  a  change.  The  father 
realized  what  the  home  needed  most,  and  went  back 
alone  to  Kentucky.  There  he  found  Sarah  Johnston, 
a  young  widow,  whom  he  had  always  known,  and  per- 


A  BACKWOODS  BOYHOOD  15 

suaded  her  to  marry  him.  The  coming  of  this  new 
mother  to  Little  Pigeon  Creek  was  a  fortunate  thing 
for  the  Lincoln  children,  for  she  loved  them  and  cared 
for  them  as  tenderly  as  their  own  mother  would  have 
done.  Her  three  children,  too,  brought  into  Abe's  life 
the  cheer  of  companionship  that  he  had  needed,  and 
saved  him  from  much  of  the  melancholy  toward  which 
he  was  always  strongly  inclined.  She  was  considered 
rich  in  the  little  Hoosier  settlement.  It  took  four 
horses  to  haul  the  real  furniture  that  she  brought. 
There  were  beds  and  chairs,  and  there  was  a  fifty-dol 
lar  walnut  bureau,  the  first  the  children  had  ever  seen. 
This  bureau  was  an  object  of  such  splendor  that  Tom 
Lincoln  pronounced  it  "  little  less  than  sinful  to  own 
such  a  thing." 

Soon  the  cheerless  cabin  was  made  homelike.  Into 
the  open  doorway  Mrs.  Lincoln  had  them  fit  a  door  of 
split  timber.  A  window  was  cut  through  the  logs  and 
frames  were  set  in.  There  was  no  glass  in  the  frontier 
country,  so  they  fastened  sheets  of  greased  paper 
across  the  window  to  let  the  light  through.  Boards 
were  split  with  axe  and  wedge  and  laid  on  the  earth 
for  flooring.  The  open  spaces  between  the  logs  in  the 
walls  were  filled  with  clay.  And  so  the  cabin  became 
a  house.  These  were  not  the  only  changes.  Between 
the  boy  and  his  new  mother  there  sprang  up  an  under 
standing  that  soon  ripened  into  love.  She  believed  in 
him  and  encouraged  him  in  a  way  that  his  father 
never  did,  and  she  saw  to  it  that  the  ambitious  boy 
had  new  arid  better  opportunities  to  learn,  and  that 
his  father  and  others  did  not  disturb  him  when  he 
wanted  to  read.  Because  she  found  him  unlike  other 
children,  she  kept  watch  over  him  with  special  tender 
ness.  Fifty  years  later,  when  he  had  grown  to  man- 


16  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

hood  and  had  given  his  life  for  his  country,  she  re 
called  to  a  friend  the  boyhood  that  had  been  intrusted 
to  her  for  guidance.  "  Abe  was  a  poor  boy,"  she  said, 
"  and  I  can  say  what  scarcely  one  woman  —  a  mother 
—  can  say  in  a  thousand.  Abe  never  gave  me  a  cross 
Ttrord  or  look,  and  never  refused  to  do  anything  I  re 
quested  him.  I  never  gave  him  a  cross  word  in  all  my 
life.  His  mind  and  mine  —  what  little  I  had  —  seemed 
to  run  together.  He  was  here  after  he  was  elected 
President.  He  was  the  best  boy  I  ever  saw,  or  expect 
to  see."  And  it  was  of  her  that  he  said  in  one  of  his 
rare  bursts  of  confidence,  "  All  that  I  am  or  hope  to 
be  I  owe  to  my  mother." 

Neighbors  have  left  many  accounts  of  Abraham's 
boyhood.  These  all  testify  that  "  he  saw  hardships,  had 
meagre  clothing,  coarse  food,  and  no  advantage  of 
securing  an  education.  All  who  knew  him  agreed  that 
his  ways  were  not  like  those  of  other  boys,  and  he  was 
not  fully  understood."  One  thing  is  sure  from  his  own 
accounts  of  his  boyhood,  that,  with  all  its  hardships 
and  its  days  of  sadness,  it  was  a  very  happy  one. 

It  is  hard  to  believe  that,  in  the  early  days  of  the 
West,  men  and  women  had  the  same  strange  super 
stitions  that  the  Puritans  had  in  New  England  two 
hundred  years  earlier.  It  is  true,  however,  that  in 
the  country  where  Abraham  Lincoln  lived  as  a  boy. 
people  believed  that  their  lives  and  fortunes  were  in 
fluenced  by  visions,  and  ghosts,  and  witches.  They  be 
lieved,  for  instance,  that  potatoes  planted  "  in  the  dark 
of  the  moon  "  would  suffer  blight ;  that  fences  built 
u  in  the  light  of  the  moon  "  were  bound  to  fall ;  that  a 
bird  at  the  window  foretold  death  ;  that  the  breath  of 
a  horse  in  a  child's  face  would  give  it  the  whooping 
cough  ;  that  work  could  not  be  commenced  with  safety 


A  BACKWOODS  BOYHOOD  17 

on  Friday.  Women  supposed  to  be  witches  were  driven 
fram  the  neighborhood.  The  men  told  their  dreams  to 
one  another  and  were  guided  by  them,  as  men  were 
in  the  days  of  Pharaoh  of  old.  From  the  influence  of 
these  superstitions  Abraham  Lincoln  never  wholly 
escaped,  and  in  the  experiences  of  his  after-life  we 
find  evidence  of  his  belief  in  the  supernatural. 

At  Little  Pigeon  Creek  the  settlers  had  built  a  log 
church,  much  of  the  work  on  the  windows,  doors,  and 
pulpit  being  the  handiwork  of  Tom  Lincoln  and  his 
boy,  Abe.  Here  the  younger  Lincoln  heard  sermons 
from  itinerant  preachers,  some  of  whom  were  ignorant 
and  undignified,  but  all  of  whom  were  earnestly  devoted 
to  the  welfare  of  their  people.  At  this  time  a  spirit  of 
enmity  toward  slavery  was  beginning  to  be  felt  among 
the  church  folk  in  the  Ohio  valley.  In  many  neighbor 
hoods  the  people  were  helping  negro  slaves  from  over 
the  river  to  escape  to  Canada  and  freedom,  while  the 
wandering  preachers,  who  had  seen  some  of  the  injus 
tice  of  slavery  farther  south,  denounced  it  from  their 
pulpits  and,  in  secret,  helped  to  organize  the  anti- 
slavery  movement  in  the  border  States.  Mr.  Lincoln 
and  his  wife  were  devout  church  members,  and  Abra 
ham,  although  not  yet  interested  in  religious  things, 
was  regularly  to  be  found  at  church,  just  as  he  was 
always  to  be  found  where  men  and  women  gathered, 
and  where  he  could  pick  up  something  of  value  to  add 
to  his  store  of  knowledge. 

For  a  time,  while  his  sister  was  serving  their  neigh 
bors,  the  Crawfords,  as  cook  and  housemaid,  he  was 
their  farm-boy,  clearing  up  stumps,  plowing,  harvestingT 
or  splitting  rails,  for  twenty-five  cents  a  day,  and  bj 
uight  tending  the  baby  and  helping  about  the  house. 
tie  served  Mrs.  Crawford  the  more  willingly  because 


18  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

she  was  fond  of  him  and  had  books  to  lend  him.  One 
of  these  books  he  took  home  to  read  in  his  bed  in  the 
loft  in  the  early  morning.  He  laid  it  between  the  logs 
in  the  wall,  and  a  sudden  rain  in  the  night  drenched 
it.  Mr.  Crawford  refused  to  accept  the  book  when  he 
brought  it  back,  and  made  the  boy  pull  fodder  for 
three  days  to  pay  for  it.  But  at  the  end  of  three  bitter 
days  the  boy  owned  his  first  book.  In  the  weeks  that 
followed,  when  he  could  throw  himself  down  by  the 
fireplace  and  read  at  night,  he  made  the  book  doubly 
his  own  by  hard  study.  It  was  on  his  way  to  the  inau 
guration  as  President  Lincoln  that  he  recalled  this 
experience  in  an  address  to  the  legislature  of  New 
Jersey :  — 

"  May  I  be  pardoned,"  he  said,  "  if,  upon  this  occa 
sion,  I  mention  that  away  back  in  my  childhood,  the 
earliest  'days  of  my  being  able  to  read,  I  got  hold  of 
a  small  book,  .  .  .  '  Weems's  Life  of  Washington.'  I 
remember  all  the  accounts  there  given  of  the  battle 
fields  and  struggles  for  the  liberties  of  the  country,  and 
none  fixed  themselves  upon  my  imagination  so  deeply 
as  the  struggle  here  at  Trenton.  The  crossing  of  the 
river  —  the  contest  with  the  Hessians  —  the  great 
hardships  endured  at  that  time  —  all  fixed  themselves 
on  my  memory  .  .  . ;  and  you  all  know,  for  you  have 
all  been  boys,  how  those  early  impressions  last  longer 
than  any  others.  I  recollect  thinking  then,  boy  even 
though  I  was,  that  there  must  have  been  something 
more  than  common  that  those  men  struggled  for." 


CHAPTER  IV 

A   STRANGE   EDUCATION 

NEITHER  the  work  in  the  woods  nor  that  at  the  car 
penter's  bench  attracted  the  growing  boy.  His  interest 
in  books  made  the  lonely  and  exacting  labor  with  axe 
and  hammer  harder  for  him  to  bear  than  it  was  for 
most  boys.  He  became  more  and  more  absorbed  in  his 
day-dreams,  until  his  hard-headed  employers  thought 
him  lazy  and  tried  te  discourage  his  studies.  But  what 
he  could  not  learn  from  his  books  he  was  willing  to 
get  from  men.  When  a  neighbor  came  down  the  road, 
or  an  emigrant  from  some  far  country  drove  his  ox- 
team  past  the  farm,  the  boy  was  found  leaning  against 
the  fence  asking  questions,  until  discovered  by  his 
father  and  driven  back  to  his  work. 

In  those  days  men  were  much  given  to  talking  poli 
tics,  growing  excited  over  the  respective  merits  of 
Andrew  Jackson  and  Henry  Clay.  In  their  gather 
ings,  too,  they  discussed  the  debates  between  the  Bap 
tists  and  the  Methodists,  or  the  Campbellites  and  the 
Catholics,  or  they  told  strange  tales  about  the  life 
Robert  Owen  and  his  associates  were  leading  in  the 
New  Harmony  Community  a  few  miles  to  the  south 
west,  where  all  goods  and  lands  were  held  in  common, 
like  those  of  a  single  family.  It  is  no  wonder  that  the 
boy  had  questions  to  ask,  for  the  one  thing  that  inter 
ested  him  most  was  ¥/hat  men  were  doing  in  the  great 
world  that  lay  beyond  his  vision. 

The  young  farm-boy  and  carpenter  came  into  con 
tact  with  the  world  of  men  through  two  other  employ. 


SO  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ments, —  as  clerk,  one  winter,  in  the  general  store  at 
Gentryville,  near  by,  and  as  ferryman,  for  almost  a 
year,  near  where  Anderson's  Creek  empties  into  the 
Ohio.  At  the  village  store,  men  gathered  in  the  even 
ings  and  on  Saturday  afternoons  to  read  aloud  from 
the  weekly  newspaper  and  to  talk  politics.  Here  they 
argued  about  slavery,  and  rejoiced  that  "  Indiana  had 
come  in  free,"  and  that  the  Supreme  Court  had  just 
decided  that  there  could  never  be  slaves  in  the  new 
State. 

At  Anderson's  Creek,  where  Abraham  plied  his  trade 
as  ferryman,  the  Ohio  was  every  day  carrying  past 
him  cargoes  from  the  East  and  South,  far  away.  To 
his  boat-landing  came  strange  and  interesting  travel 
ers, —  men  of  the  world,  some  of  them, — from  New 
Orleans  and  St.  Louis,  or  from  Pittsburg  and  New 
York.  Again,  on  board  the  river  craft,  the  youth  saw 
companies  of  slaves,  chained  together  like  convicts, 
bound  for  the  slave  market  farther  south,  and  the  sight 
was  a  "continued  torment"  to  i.im. 

It  was  as  ferryman  that  he  earned  his  first  dollar. 
He  was  eighteen  years  old.  Two  men  asked  him  to  row 
their  trunks  out  to  the  passing  steamer  and  each  paid 
him  half  a  dollar.  He  was  bewildered  by  the  sudden 
possession  of  so  much  money.  *'  I  could  scarcely  be 
lieve  my  eyes,"  he  said  afterward.  "  You  may  think 
it  was  a  very  little  thing,  but  it  was  a  most  important 
incident  in  my  life.  I  could  scarcely  believe  that  I,  a 
poor  boy,  had  earned  a  dollar  in  less  than  a  day.  I  was 
a  more  hopeful  and  confident  boy  from  that  time." 
These  glimpses  of  the  great  world  filled  him  with  an 
eager  desire  to  try  his  own  fortune  on  the  river,  and 
the  next  year  he  and  a  companion  took  a  flatboat  cargo 
for  a  Mr.  Gentry  to  New  Orleans. 


THE   BOY  LINCOLN   READING   BY  THE   LIGHT   OF   THE   FIRE 
(After  a  painting  by  Eastman  Johnson  made  in  1868) 


A  STRANGE   EDUCATION  21 

As  schools  were  rare  and  the  need  to  labor  pressing, 
Abraham  Lincoln's  whole  school  life  covered  less  than 
a  single  year.  Many  of  his  teachers  knew  little  more 
than  their  pupils.  But  some  of  them,  though  possessed 
of  scanty  book-learning,  had  what  was  better,  a  know 
ledge  of  the  outside  world  and  a  public  spirit  that 
made  them  leaders  of  men. 

A  mile  and  a  half  from  Little  Pigeon  Creek  a 
school  was  taught  for  a  year  or  two  by  one  of  these 
men  of  affairs,  Azel  W.  Dorsey.  It  must  have  been 
because  in  winter  time  even  the  busiest  of  men  had 
leisure  that  Azel  Dorsey  was  willing  to  teach,  for  he 
was  one  of  the  most  active  public  men  in  the  county. 
He  had  been  coroner,  and  at  this  time  was  county 
treasurer.  It  Was  in  his  cabin  that  the  people  met  to 
make  Rockport  the  county  seat,  and  in  his  cabin  the 
first  courts  were  held.  He  was  one  of  the  men  who 
gave  money  to  build  the  first  bridges  and  to  establish 
the  first  free  library.  Mr.  Dorsey's  little  schoolhouse 
had  window-panes  of  greased  paper  and  a  floor  of  split 
log  puncheon.  Here  the  Lincoln  boy,  now  ten  years 
old,  attended  for  a  few  months.  Here  he  learned  bet 
ter  how  to  use  the  few  books  that  came  into  his  pos 
session.  Here  he  met  all  the  other  children  for  miles 
around  and  engaged  with  them  in  reading-matches  and 
spelling-contests  ;  but,  best  of  all,  he  learned  from  Azel 
Dorsey,  the  man  of  affairs,  that  no  man  has  a  right  to 
be  so  busy  with  his  own  interests  that  he  forgets  his 
duty  to  his  neighborhood  and  to  the  State. 

Four  years  passed  before  he  went  to  school  agaia 
This  time  the  course  of  study  added  manners  to  the 
three  standard  subjects,  reading,  writing,  and  arith 
metic.  The  teacher,  Andrew  Crawford,  who  afterward 
rose  to  the  dignity  of  a  justice  of  the  peace  in  Spencer 


22  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

County,  stood  at  the  door  and  sent  the  children  out 
side  one  at  a  time  to  come  in  and  be  presented  to  the 
others  after  the  fashion  of  polite  society.  We  can  pic 
ture  to  ourselves  the  awkward  Lincoln  boy,  now  six 
feet  two  inches  in  height,  as  he  lifted  his  coonskin  cap 
to  pretty  Kate  Roby  and  tried  to  hide  his  blushes  and 
his  laughter  in  his  effort  to  learn  politeness.  These 
lessons  in  manners,  like  all  his  other  lessons,  he  re 
membered,  until,  in  the  greater  world  of  Spring-field 
and  of  Washington,  people  wondered  how  a  man  so  un 
gainly  and  so  poorly  dressed  seemed  never  to  forget  to 
be  a  gentleman. 

To  attend  the  next  school,  taught  by  a  Mr.  Swaney, 
Lincoln,  now  seventeen  years  old,  walked  back  and 
forth  nine  miles  each  day.  Because  of  the  time  it  took 
to  make  the  journey,  he  had  to  give  it  up  after  a  few 
weeks  and  go  to  work.  In  these  three  schools  he  found 
a  special  interest  in  the  reading-lessons,  in  the  practice 
of  declaiming  "  pieces  "  on  Friday  afternoons,  and  in 
writing  compositions.  One  of  his  school-day  writings  was 
on  "  National  Politics  "  and  another  was  on  "  Cruelty 
to  Animals."  Through  the  interest  of  an  admiring 
neighbor,  a  third  essay,  on  "  Temperance,"  was  pub 
lished  in  a  newspaper.  Reading  intelligently,  writing 
a  clear  hand,  spelling  fairly  well,  and  making  simple 
calculations  with  figures,  —  these,  with  a  grotesque  sort 
of  training  in  etiquette,  made  up  the  boy's  schooling. 
But  it  was  not  in  the  schools  that  he  got  his  education. 
The  fellowship  of  trees  and  streams  and  of  the  gentle 
wild  things  of  the  woods,  the  companionship  of  boys 
and  men,  the  pages  of  the  Bible  and  ^Esop's  Fables 
and  the  half-dozen  other  books  that  he  devoured  by 
the  blaze  of  the  fire,  and  the  discipline  of  hard  labor 
with  axe  and  plow,  —  these  were  his  teachers. 


A   STRANGE  EDUCATION  23 

In  early  days  men  traveled  many  miles  to  attend 
court,  not  because  they  had  business  there,  but  because 
the  coming  of  the  judge  and  lawyers  from  near  and 
far  brought  into  the  life  of  the  people  something  that 
was  unusual  and  often  dramatic.  To  the  court  house  at 
Boonville,  the  nearest  county  seat,  lawyers  sometimes 
came  from  as  far  away  as  Louisville  to  try  their  cases, 
to  settle  for  all  time  the  questions  of  property  rights, 
or  to  defend  men  charged  with  crime.  Witnesses  were 
examined,  and  speeches  made.  In  spite  of  the  prohibi 
tion  of  slavery  in  the  constitution  of  Indiana,  appeals 
were  made  to  these  courts  to  permit  the  holding  of 
negro  slaves  in  the  State.  To  these  meetings  of  the  court 
the  young  man  Lincoln  walked  through  the  woods  fif 
teen  miles,  whenever  he  could  manage  to  get  away  from 
his  work.  And  here  he  fed  his  fancy  and  his  ambition 
with  thoughts  of  something  greater  in  his  own  life 
than  day  labor.  Here,  too,  he  got  a  copy  of  the  laws  of 
Indiana  from  one  of  the  lawyers,  and  found  within  its 
covers  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  the  Consti 
tution  of  the  United  States,  and  the  Constitution  of 
Indiana.  Here  he  read  for  the  first  time  the  protest  of 
a  free  people  against  the  wickedness  of  human  slavery. 

As  he  listened  to  the  lawyers,  as  in  school  and  out 
he  labored  over  his  compositions,  and  as  he  read  the 
few  books  that  he  could  borrow,  one  great  need  im 
pressed  itself  more  and  more  upon  him.  He  must  learn 
how  to  make  perfectly  plain  to  others  the  thoughts 
that  men  and  books  suggested  to  him.  Often  he  would 
hear  words  whose  meaning  he  could  not  understand 
and  about  which  his  father  would  not  let  him  ask 
questions,  or  he  would  find  in  his  books  things  that 
nobody  could  explain  to  him,  and  as  he  struggled  to 
make  these  things  clear  to  his  own  mind,  he  saw  how 


24  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

necessary  it  was  to  use  the  right  words  in  order  to 
make  his  thought  plain  to  others.  "  I  remember,"  he 
once  said,  "  how,  when  a  mere  child,  I  used  to  get  irri 
tated  when  anybody  talked  to  me  in  a  way  I  could  not 
understand.  I  do  not  think  I  ever  got  angry  at  any 
thing  else  in  my  life;  but  that  always  disturbed  my 
temper,  and  has  ever  since.  I  can  remember  going  to 
my  little  bedroom,  after  hearing  the  neighbors  talk  of 
an  evening  with  my  father,  and  spending  no  small  part 
of  the  night  walking  up  and  down  and  trying  to  make 
out  what  was  the  exact  meaning  of  some  of  their,  to 
me,  dark  sayings.  I  could  not  sleep,  although  I  tried 
to,  when  I  got  on  such  a  hunt  for  an  idea,  until  I  had 
caught  it ;  and  when  I  thought  I  had  got  it,  I  was  not 
satisfied  until  I  had  repeated  it  over  and  over ;  until 
I  had  put  it  in  language  plain  enough,  as  I  thought, 
for  any  boy  I  knew  to  comprehend.  This  was  a  kind 
of  passion  with  me,  and  it  has  stuck  by  me ;  for  I  am 
never  easy  now,  when  I  am  handling  a  thought,  till 
I  have  bounded  it  north,  and  bounded  it  south,  and 
bounded  it  east,  and  bounded  it  west." 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   LAND    OF   FULL-GROWN   MEN 

THE  time  had  come  for  restless  Thomas  Lincoln  to 
undertake  another  migration.  The  earnings  of  the  In 
diana  farm,  added  to  what  money  father  and  son  could 
save  from  their  wages,  had  not  been  enough  in  four 
teen  years  to  enable  them,  with  their  ways  of  doing 
business,  to  pay  the  price  of  two  dollars  an  acre  for 
which  the  father  had  bought  the  place.  Thomas  Lin 
coln  had  begun  to  hear  stories  of  the  richness  of  the 
Illinois  prairie  land.  The  tide  of  westward  emigration 
was  setting  in  once  more,  stronger  than  ever,  and  as 
usual  Thomas  Lincoln  was  drifting  with  the  tide. 

The  three  families  of  Lincoln,  Hanks,  and  John 
ston,  with  Abraham  Lincoln  as  chief  teamster,  got 
their  worldly  goods  together  in  February,  1830,  and 
started  their  ox-cart  caravan  on  its  westward  journey. 
The  State  toward  which  they  were  bent  bore  the  In 
dian  name,  Illinois,  which  means  "  the  land  of  full- 
grown  men."  Surely,  here  was  a  country  in  which  the 
young  Lincoln,  now  six  feet  and  four  inches  tall,  would 
find  a  place  for  himself.  Abraham  was  twenty-one 
years  old,  and  his  own  master.  He  laid  in  an  outfit  of 
notions,  and  as  they  traveled  through  the  new  country, 
sold  them  to  the  farmers  and,  by  good  bargaining, 
doubled  his  original  capital  of  thirty  dollars. 

The  roads  were  heavy  with  frost  and  mud.  At  the 
fords  —  for  there  were  no  bridges  —  the  ice  had  to  be 
broken  to  let  the  wheels  pass.  The  first  of  the  com 
pany  to  get  into  trouble  was  a  small  dog  that  at  one 


26  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

of  these  crossings  was  left  behind  and  ran  up  and  down 
the  farther  bank  protesting  piteously.  "  I  could  not 
endure  the  idea  of  abandoning  even  a  dog,"  Lincoln 
said,  "  so  I  took  off  my  shoes,  waded  across  the  stream, 
and  triumphantly  returned  with  the  shivering  animal 
under  my  arm.  His  frantic  leaps  of  joy  and  gratitude 
amply  repaid  me  for  all  the  exposure  I  had  undergone." 
After  helping  the  others  establish  themselves  in  their 
prairie  home,  Abraham  Lincoln  found  his  way  to  the 
village  of  New  Salem,  on  the  banks  of  the  Sangamon. 
Here  he  entered  the  employ  of  Denton  Off utt,  by  turns 
conducting  his  general  store  and  flouring-mlll,  and 
finally  undertaking  for  him  a  trading  expedition  to 
New  Orleans.  For  this  journey  he  built  a  flatboat  and 
loaded  it  with  bacon  and  farm  produce,  which  he  was 
to  sell  down  the  river.  The  venture  was  a  financial 
success,  and  won  for  the  young  man  Mr.  Offutt's  enthu 
siastic  good  will.  Three  years  before,  he  had  made 
a  similar  journey  for  Mr.  Gentry,  so  that  the  Missis 
sippi  was  not  strange  to  him.  The  woodsman's  habit 
of  close  observation  now  led  him,  unconsciously,  to 
note  the  physical  features  of  the  country  through  which 
the  great  river  was  carrying  him,  so  that  his  retentive 
memory  enabled  him  thirty  years  later  to  follow  the 
movements  of  the  vessels  of  Farragut  and  Porter  and 
the  armies  of  General  Grant  as  they  closed  in  upon 
Vicksburg  and  permitted  "  the  Father  of  Waters 
again  to  go  unvexed  to  the  sea."  At  New  Orleans  he 
attended  the  slave  auction.  Here  he  saw  husbands  and 
wives  separated  and  children  taken  from  their  mothers 
and  sold  to  strangers.  The  unspeakable  cruelty  of  it 
all  stirred  the  heart  of  the  young  man,  who,  as  a  boy, 
had  been  willing  to  fight  his  playmates  to  save  a  turtle 
from  abuse,  and  who,  as  a  man,  had  waded  barefooted 


THE  LAND   OF  FULL-GROWN  MEN         27 

through  the  ice  rather  than  abandon  even  a  little  dog, 
When  he  returned  to  Illinois,  it  was  with  a  deepened 
sense  of  the  injustice  of  human  slavery.  The  sight 
of  men  and  women  in  chains  was  still  a  "continued 
torment "  to  him. 

In  his  new  home,  as  in  Indiana,  he  was  the  strongest 
aian  in  all  the  countryside.  Wherever  men  gathered, 
his  admiring  employer,  Mr.  Offutt,  was  given  to  brag 
ging  of  his  clerk's  strength,  thus  involving  him  in  ath 
letic  contests.  One  of  these  rough-and-tumble  affairs 
proved  more  important  than  Lincoln  imagined.  Jack 
Armstrong,  the  champion  of  the  near-by  settlement, 
Clary's  Grove,  had  heard  Mr.  Offutt's  boasts  of  young 
Lincoln's  prowess  until  he  could  stand  it  no  longer. 
He  challenged  Lincoln  to  a  wrestling-match,  which  a 
touch  of  foul  play  converted  into  a  fist-fight,  and  in 
which  the  champion  of  Clary's  Grove  bade  fair  to  be 
defeated.  Before  he  had  finished,  Lincoln  had  to  whip 
the  entire  gang,  one  at  a  time,  but  he  did  it  so  thor 
oughly  and  with  such  good  humor  that  he  won  their 
hearty  friendship  and  kept  it  ever  afterward. 

In  1832,  war  with  the  Indians  broke  out  in  north 
ern  Illinois,  and  troops  were  called  for  to  march  against 
Black  Hawk  and  his  Indian  braves.  Lincoln,  being 
out  of  a  job,  was  among  the  first  to  enlist.  Through  the 
help  of  his  new  friends  from  Clary's  Grove  he  was 
chosen  captain.  This  was  his  first  assurance  that  the 
thing  he  had  always  most  desired,  the  good  will  of  his 
fellow  men,  was  his.  The  election  to  the  captaincy 
was  a  success,  as  he  declared  long  afterward,  "  which 
gave  me  more  pleasure  than  any  I  have  had  since." 
By  the  time  Captain  Lincoln's  company  reached  the 
front  the  war  was  over.  The  leisure  time  of  this  famous 
military  campaign  Lincoln  spent  in  athletic  sports, 


28  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

running  foot-races,  and  jumping  and  wrestling  for  the 
championship  among  the  troops.  The  months  out  of 
doors,  in  daily  touch  with  thousands  of  other  soldiers, 
the  close  companionship,  in  camp  and  on  the  march, 
with  so  many  young  and  active  comrades  in  arms, 
3trengthened  in  him  the  social  spirit  that  was  always  a 
dominating  characteristic,  and  encouraged  him  on  his 
return  to  enter  the  campaign  for  the  legislature. 

He  was  now  twenty-three  years  old,  and  he  had  but 
ten  days  in  which  to  get  over  the  district  and  make 
the  campaign.  He  introduced  himself  to  the  voters  in 
a  way  that  won  their  respect :  "I  was  born  ...  in 
the  most  humble  walks  of  life.  I  have  no  wealthy  or 
popular  relatives  or  friends  to  recommend  me.  ...  If 
the  good  people  in  their  wisdom  see  fit  to  keep  me  in 
the  background,  I  have  been  too  familiar  with  disap 
pointment  to  be  very  much  chagrined."  His  first  cam 
paign  speech  was  made  at  an  out-of-door  meeting, 
where  he  had  to  restore  order  by  getting  down  from 
the  platform  and  thrashing  a  disturber.  This  won  him 
tha  full  sympathy  of  the  crowd.  The  speech  that  fol 
lowed  is  simple  and  boyish :  "  Fellow  citizens,  I  pre 
sume  you  know  who  I  am.  I  am  humble  Abraham 
Lincoln.  I  have  been  solicited  by  many  friends  to  be 
come  a  candidate  for  the  legislature.  My  politics  are 
short  and  sweet,  like  the  old  woman's  dance.  I  am  in 
favor  of  a  national  bank.  I  am  in  favor  of  the  internal 
improvement  system  and  a  high  protective  tariff.  These 
are  my  sentiments  and  political  principles.  If  elected, 
I  shall  be  thankful ;  if  not,  it  will  be  all  the  same." 

Lincoln  lost  the  election,  but  in  his  own  neighbor 
hood  of  New  Salem  he  received  all  but  three  votes  out 
of  over  two  hundred.  The  defeat,  instead  of  discour 
aging  him,  only  aroused  his  ambition.  He  realized  that 


THE  LAND  OF  FULL-GROWN   MEN         29 

he  must  keep  on  studying  men,  and  that  he  must  know 
as  much  as  the  men  knew  with  whom  he  had  to  deal. 
He  made  friends  with  Mentor  Graham,  the  village 
school-teacher,  and  being  determined  to  learn  how  to 
make  what  he  had  to  say  perfectly  clear  to  the  most 
ignorant  of  his  hearers,  he  borrowed  an  English  gram 
mar  of  Mr.  Graham  and  began  to  study  the  science  of 
language.  From  others  he  secured  the  works  of  Robert 
Burns  and  Shakespeare,  which  he  read  until  he  had 
many  of  the  better  passages  by  heart.  His  unlettered 
friends  used  to  laugh  at  him  as  they  watched  him  with 
one  of  these  books  in  his  hand,  lying  in  the  shade  of 
a  tree-trunk  near  the  store  where  he  worked,  with  his 
bare  feet  above  his  head,  too  absorbed  to  notice  pass 
ers-by  or  to  think  of  possible  customers.  From  the 
poet  of  the  common  people,  from  Shakespeare,  and 
from  the  Bible,  which  he  kept  always  near  at  hand 
and  studied  and  memorized  in  his  hours  of  leisure,  he 
was  getting  the  mastery  of  straightforward  speech  and 
becoming  familiar  with  the  simple,  vigorous  words  that 
men  have  always  understood.  Thus  was  he  fitting  him 
self  to  become  one  of  the  world's  masters  of  English 
literary  style. 

With  the  grammar  to  study  and  the  masterpieces 
of  English  literature  for  daily  companionship,  he  had 
something  now  to  occupy  all  his  thoughts  and  take  his 
mind  away  from  his  day-dreams.  But  how  was  he  to 
make  a  living  in  the  meanwhile?  If  he  continued  in  the 
service  of  other  men,  his  time  would  not  be  his  own 
and  his  studies  would  suffer.  When  the  opportunity 
came,  not  long  afterward,  to  buy  the  New  Salem  store 
on  credit,  in  partnership  with  a  man  named  Berry,  it 
offered  him  just  what  he  most  wished,  —  the  possi 
bility  of  making  a  living  and  pursuing  his  studies  at 


30  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  same  time.  But  the  fortunes  of  New  Salem  soon 
began  to  decline,  his  partner  went  to  the  bad,  and  the 
store  of  Berry  and  Lincoln  "  winked  out,"  leaving 
unpaid  a  mass  of  notes  whose  magnitude  led  Lincoln 
to  call  them  "  the  national  debt,"  but  all  of  which  he 
finally  paid  in  full. 

It  was  while  he  was  trying  to  conduct  this  unfortu 
nate  business  enterprise  that  a  happy  accident  put  into 
jris  hands  his  first  law-book,  and  strengthened  his  deter 
mination  to  become  a  lawyer.  As  he  tells  it :  "  A  man 
who  was  migrating  to  the  west  drove  up  with  a  wagon 
which  contained  his  household  plunder.  He  asked  if 
I  would  buy  an  old  barrel  for  which  he  had  no  room, 
and  which  he  said  contained  nothing  of  special  value. 
I  did  not  want  it,  but  to  oblige  him,  I  paid  a  half-dol 
lar  for  it,  put  it  away,  and  forgot  all  about  it.  Some 
time  after,  I  came  upon  the  barrel,  and  emptying  it 
upon  the  floor,  I  found  at  the  bottom  of  the  rubbish 
a  complete  edition  of  Blackstone's  Commentaries.  I 
began  to  read  those  famous  works  and  I  had  plenty 
of  time,  for  during  the  long  summer  days,  when  the 
farmers  were  busy  with  their  crops,  my  customers 
were  few  and  far  between.  The  more  I  read,  the  more 
intensely  interested  I  became.  Never  in  my  life  was 
my  mind  so  absorbed.  I  read  until  I  devoured  them." 

The  failure  of  Berry  and  Lincoln  brought  the  young 
student  face  to  face  once  more  with  the  problem  of 
making  a  living  without  giving  up  his  studies.  Just  at 
this  crisis  came  an  appointment  as  postmaster  at  the 
hands  of  President  Jackson.  For  a  few  months  he 
carried  the  mail  in  his  high  hat  and  read  the  news* 
papers  that  came  into  his  keeping.  Then  came  the  first 
profitable  employment  he  ever  had.  John  Calhoun, 
the  public  surveyor,  a  Democratic  official,  needed  an 


THE  LAND   OF  FULL-GROWN  MEN         31 

assistant  on  whose  honesty  and  intelligence  he  could 
rely.  Although  Lincoln  was  a  Whig,  Mr.  Calhoun 
persuaded  him  to  study  surveying  and  take  the  place, 
assuring  him  that  he  might  retain  his  political  inde 
pendence.  Following  unconsciously  in  the  footsteps  of 
George  Washington,  he  soon  mastered  the  science  of 
surveying,  and  found  himself  for  the  first  time  earning 
more  money  than  the  bare  needs  of  life  required.  As 
postmaster  and  as  surveyor  he  was  enlarging  his  ac 
quaintance  and  winning  the  regard  of  men.  Already 
he  had  become  known  as  "  honest  Abe  Lincoln." 

During  these  years  of  struggle  there  came  into  his 
life  a  few  months  of  great  happiness.  When  he  was 
twenty-three  years  of  age,  he  met  and  loved  Ann  Rut- 
ledge,  a  fair-haired,  delicate  girl  of  nineteen,  and  in  time 
he  won  her  love.  She  had  an  air  of  gentleness  and 
distinction  and  a  mind  of  unusual  clearness  and  power. 
As  soon  as  he  could  become  a  lawyer  and  be  able  to 
provide  a  home,  they  were  to  marry.  Suddenly  a  dread 
ful  illness  came  and  she  died.  The  shock  that  followed 
her  death  plunged  Lincoln  into  such  melancholy  that 
his  friends  were  afraid  he  would  lose  his  mind.  He 
went  often  to  the  spot  where,  he  declared,  his  heart 
was  buried.  One  stormy  night  he  cried  out  in  his 
sorrow :  "  I  cannot  forget.  The  thought  of  the  snow 
and  the  rain  on  her  grave  fills  me  with  indescribable 
grief." 


CHAPTER  VI 

LAWYER   AND    LAWMAKER 

IN  1834,  the  young  man  of  twenty-five,  who  had  been 
common  laborer,  farm-hand,  carpenter,  ferryman,  flat- 
boatman,  peddler,  grocer's  clerk,  soldier,  unsuccessful 
merchant,  postmaster,  and  surveyor,  and,  all  the  way 
along,  dreamer  and  thinktr  and  student,  became  for  a 
second  time  a  candidate  for  the  legislature,  and  was 
successful. 

His  work  as  lawmaker  satisfied  the  people,  and  he 
was  elected  again  in  1836.  The  announcement  of  his 
candidacy  for  the  legislature  in  1836  contained  one 
political  principle  which  proved  him  a  statesman  rather 
than  a  politician.  It  was  :  "  If  elected,  I  shall  consider 
the  whole  people  of  Sangamon  my  constituents,  as 
well  those  that  oppose  as  those  that  support  me." 

In  the  legislative  session  of  1837,  he  brought  about 
the  enactment  of  a  law  which  removed  the  State  capi 
tal  from  Vandalia  to  Springfield.  This  victory  showed 
that,  while  other  legislators  were  playing  party  politics, 
he  had  learned  how  to  get  things  done. 

Far  more  significant  than  this  venture  in  practical 
politics  was  the  protest  he  made  against  slavery,  which 
he  caused  to  be  recorded  in  the  legislative  journals,  anc? 
to  which  he  succeeded  in  getting  one  other  representa 
tive  to  sign  his  name.  At  this  time  the  negro  had  few 
friends.  Those  who  believed  in  ending  human  slavery 
at  once  and  forever  seemed  not  to  understand  that 
what  they  were  proposing  would  not  be  possible  in  any 
lawful  way,  and  their  efforts  at  destroying  that  great 


LAWYER  AND  LAWMAKER  33 

evil  not  only  made  them  feared  and  hated,  but  put  off 
the  longer  the  reform  for  which  they  were  laboring  so 
earnestly  and  so  unwisely.  Lincoln  saw  this,  and  yet 
both  his  conscience  and  his  heart  rebelled  against 
slavery  as  an  institution  which,  though  lawful  and 
therefore  not  to  be  overthrown  by  violence,  was  yet 
a  great  moral  wrong.  His  feeling  in  the  matter  was 
expressed  in  a  protest  containing  the  following  words: 
"  Resolutions  upon  the  subject  of  domestic  slavery 
having  passed  both  branches  of  the  General  Assembly 
at  its  present  session,  the  undersigned  hereby  protest 
against  the  passage  of  the  same.  They  believe  that  the 
institution  of  slavery  is  founded  on  both  injustice  and 
bad  policy,  but  that  the  promulgation  of  abolition  doc 
trines  tends  rather  to  increase  than  abate  its  evils." 
It  required  courage  to  make  this  protest  at  a  time 
when  those  who  expressed  views  on  slavery  even  as 
moderate  as  these  were  unpopular. 

Meanwhile,  Lincoln  had  been  diligently  reading  law, 
and  in  1837  his  great  ambition  was  attained  —  he 
passed  his  examination  for  admission  to  the  bar. 

The  removal  of  the  State  capital  that  same  year 
to  Springfield,  chiefly  through  his  own  efforts,  as  we 
have  seen,  led  Lincoln  to  believe  that  in  Springfield 
he  would  succeed  best  in  the  practice  of  his  new  pro 
fession.  Putting  into  his  saddle-bags  a  little  clothing 
and  two  or  three  law-books,  he  borrowed  a  horse  and 
rode  to  the  new  capital.  At  the  store  of  Joshua  Speed, 
who  was  to  become  his  intimate  friend,  he  figured  on 
the  cost  of  furnishing  a  bedroom  ;  but  the  price,  seven 
teen  dollars,  was  more  than  he  had,  so  he  asked  for 
credit  until  Christmas,  adding,  "  If  my  experiment  here 
as  a  lawyer  is  a  success,  I  will  pay  you  then.  If  I  fail 
in  that,  I  will  probably  never  pay  you  at  all."  He 


34  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

looked  so  utterly  gloomy  that  Speed  offered  to  share 
quarters  with  him.  Lincoln  took  the  saddle-bags  up 
stairs,  laid  them  on  the  floor,  and  came  down,  this  time 
beaming  with  smiles  as  he  exclaimed,  "  Well,  Speed, 
I  'm  moved." 

At  one  end  of  Speed's  store  was  a  great  fireplace 
about  which  the  men  of  Springfield  were  wont  to  gather. 
Here  the  new  lodger  spent  many  spare  hours  arguing 
with  the  leaders  of  public  opinion  about  the  religious 
and  political  questions  of  the  day.  Here  he  met  Ste 
phen  A.  Douglas,  then  a  rising  young  politician  of 
opposite  political  faith,  whose  after-life,  with  its  rival 
ries,  and  its  bitternesses,  and  its  final  loyal  friendship, 
was  to  be  so  strangely  interwoven  with  his  own.  Here 
a  debating  tournament  was  arranged,  in  which  all  the 
leading  speakers  were  to  take  part.  It  was  held  in  the 
Presbyterian  church,  where  they  could  have  a  suitable 
audience,  and  it  was  at  this  gathering  that  Lincoln  and 
Douglas  had  their  first  serious  public  debate.  Some  of 
the  younger  men  in  this  group  organized  the  literary 
society  of  Springfield  in  which  Lincoln  was  to  become 
a  leading  spirit.  Here,  also,  he  became  famous  as  a 
teller  of  stories. 

The  practice  of  law  develops  in  the  beginner  an 
infinite  patience.  Its  rewards  come  slowly.  The  young 
lawyer  had  many  friends,  for  he  had  a  genius  for  win 
ning  the  good  will  of  men.  From  the  first  his  success 
was  assured,  if  only  he  could  be  patient  long  enough. 
Those  were  days  when  law-books  were  few.  The  attor 
ney  who  won  his  cases  needed  a  clear  head  and  an 
understanding  of  a  few  principles  of  law,  but,  more 
than  this,  he  must  be  able  to  win  verdicts  from  jurors, 
who  almost  always  were  men  of  scanty  education  and 
many  prejudices.  Lincoln  was  not  yet  learned  in  the 


LAWYER  AND  LAWMAKER  35 

law,  but  he  understood  human  nature.  In  time  it  came 
to  be  known  that  no  lawyer  gained  more  readily  the 
confidence  of  a  jury  and  none  won  more  verdicts  than 
"  honest  Abe  Lincoln."  The  experiment,  as  he  called 
it,  was  a  success,  and  his  place  at  the  bar  was  estab 
lished.  Yet  while  he  was  winning  verdicts  he  contin« 
ued  his  studies.  "  The  way  to  know  the  law,"  he  said, 
"is  very  simple,  though  laborious  and  tedious.  It  is 
only  to  get  books  and  read  and  study  them  carefully. 
Work,  work,  work,  is  the  main  thing." 

The  best  way  to  build  up  a  practice  and  so  make 
the  problem  of  a  livelihood  less  serious  seemed  to  lie 
in  the  pursuit  of  politics,  for  in  politics  he  could  gain 
a  larger  acquaintance,  do  favors  for  others,  and  so  find 
clients.  The  lawyers  of  that  day  were  nearly  all  poli 
ticians.  Thus  his  interest  in  politics  steadily  increased, 
while  his  influence  among  his  fellows  was  growing 
wider.  In  his  campaigns  he  met  all  sorts  and  conditions 
of  men,  interested  himself  in  their  affairs,  and  discussed 
with  them  questions  of  government,  —  national  and 
state,  —  displaying  in  his  opinions  much  sound  judg 
ment.  In  the  places  of  influence  and  power  which  he 
hoped  some  day  to  fill  he  expected  opportunities  for 
wider  service  to  the  community  of  which  he  was  a 
part. 

In  1838  and  in  1840,  he  was  again  elected  to  the 
legislature.  In  each  of  these  sessions,  the  Whig  party 
proposed  him  for  presiding  officer  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  of  which  he  was  a  member.  In  1840, 
he  was  their  candidate  for  presidential  elector,  to 
vote  for  William  Henry  Harrison  for  President.  The 
men  of  Illinois  had  learned  by  this  time  to  trust  his 
rugged  honesty,  for  in  politics,  as  in  the  wrestling- 
matches  of  years  ago,  he  "  played  fair."  To  the  well- 


36  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

dressed  and  somewhat  aristocratic  society  of  Springfield 
Lincoln  still  presented  the  appearance  of  an  overgrown, 
uncultivated,  young  countryman.  He  was  young  and 
poor,  and  he  still  realized  how  little  he  knew.  But  men 
no  longer  despised  him  for  his  youth  or  his  ignorance, 
nor  dared  ridicule  his  poverty.  Through  the  practice 
he  had  had  long  ago  in  his  Indiana  boyhood  in  making 
stump  speeches  and  in  public  debate,  as  well  as  in  his 
later  experiences  in  the  Springfield  debating  society, 
and  in  his  discussions  in  the  tavern  and  at  the  coun 
try  store,  he  had  become  a  master  of  debate,  and  was 
abundantly  able  to  take  care  of  himself  in  a  running 
discussion  that  called  for  a  ready  response  to  every 
interruption,  whether  looked  for  or  not. 

In  Springfield  a  prominent  citizen  and  legislator 
named  Forquer  had  built  himself  a  new  house  upon 
which  he  had  set  up  a  lightning-rod,  the  only  one 
in  that  part  of  the  world.  This  man  had  recently  de 
serted  the  Whig  party  and  become  a  Democrat,  and 
Jiis  disloyalty  to  his  former  principles  had  just  been 
rewarded  by  appointment  to  an  office  that  brought  him 
a  good  income,  but  cost  him  the  respect  of  many  of  his 
former  associates.  Lincoln's  friend,  Speed,  tells  how, 
after  one  of  Lincoln's  campaign  speeches,  Forquer 
asked  leave  to  be  heard.  He  commenced  by  saying 
that  the  young  man,  Lincoln,  would  have  to  be  "taken 
down,"  and  that  he  was  sorry  the  task  had  fallen  to 
him.  He  went  on  to  answer  Lincoln's  speech  in  a  way 
that  showed  how  much  older  and  wiser  he  thought 
himself  than  the  young  upstart  whose  ambition  it 
had  become  his  duty  to  rebuke.  Lincoln  waited  until 
Forquer  had  finished,  but  his  flashing  eye  showed  that 
he  did  not  intend  to  accept  such  treatment  meekly.  He 
closed  his  reply  to  Forquer  by  saying :  "  The  gentle- 


LAWYER  AND  LAWMAKER  37 

man  has  seen  fit  to  allude  to  my  being  a  young  man ; 
but  he  forgets  that  I  am  older  in  years  than  I  am  in 
the  tricks  and  trades  of  politicians.  I  desire  to  live, 
and  I  desire  place  and  distinction  ;  but  I  would  rather 
die  now,  than,  like  the  gentleman,  live  to  see  the  day 
that  I  would  change  my  politics  for  an  office  worth  three 
thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  then  feel  compelled  to 
erect  a  lightning-rod  to  protect  a  guilty  conscience 
from  an  offended  God." 

It  was  in  one  of  these  campaign  speeches  that  Lin 
coln  was  interrupted  by  some  one  in  the  audience  who, 
thinking  to  humiliate  him  by  reminding  the  people  of 
his  poverty,  called  out  in  the  midst  of  his  speech  :  "  Mr. 
Lincoln,  is  it  true  that  you  entered  this  State  bare 
footed,  driving  a  yoke  of  oxen  ?  "  After  a  pause,  the 
speaker  replied  that  he  thought  he  could  prove  the  fact 
by  at  least  a  dozen  men  in  the  crowd,  any  one  of  whom 
was  more  respectable  than  his  questioner. 

Hard  as  it  was  to  be  laughed  at,  it  was  not  for 
Abraham  Lincoln  to  become  embittered  by  these  un 
kind  attacks,  for  through  years  of  exposure  to  the  real 
hardships  of  life,  he  had  learned  patience.  As  he  once 
said  :  "  I  have  endured  a  great  deal  of  ridicule  without 
much  malice  ;  and  I  have  received  a  great  deal  of  kind 
ness,  not  quite  free  from  ridicule.  I  am  used  to  ita" 
But  ridicule  was  not  all  that  he  had  had  to  bear.  He 
had  endured  suffering  and  sorrow  ;  and  he  had  walked 
through  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death.  Yet  through 
it  all  he  had  kept  his  faith  in  a  destiny  which  sorrow 
could  not  mar. 


CHAPTER  VII 

MARRIAGE   AND   CONGRESS 

SPRINGFIELD,  in  1840,  was  an  ambitious  country 
town  of  about  twenty-five  hundred  inhabitants.  There 
was  some  wealth  and  some  "  flourishing  around  in 
carriages,"  as  Lincoln  put  it.  Among  those  who  had 
money  the  young  lawyer  would  have  had  little  reason 
to  expect  to  be  treated  especially  well,  for  he  was  "  poor, 
without  the  means  of  hiding  his  poverty."  Fortunately 
he  had  no  false  pride ;  he  was  not  ashamed  that  he 
had  nothing,  nor  did  he  boast  of  it  in  his  speeches.  The 
men  of  Springfield  respected  him  for  what  he  had 
accomplished.  In  society,  although  he  was  quiet  and 
timid,  he  was  a  welcome  guest,  because  he  talked  intel 
ligently  on  the  subjects  that  interested  people,  and  his 
droll  sayings  were  often  repeated  and  laughed  at.  It 
seems  odd  that  the  rough  flatboatman  of  ten  years 
before  should  be  put  on  the  cotillion  committee  to 
manage  the  fashionable  dances  of  the  winter's  season, 
but  the  fact  was  that  he  was  liked  by  everybody,  and 
in  that  society  a  man  was  not  despised  if  he  had 
real  ability  and  was  willing  to  help  others  and  able  to 
interest  them. 

In  the  social  life  of  the  little  town  a  young  Demo 
cratic  politician,  James  Shields,  afterward  a  United 
States  Senator,  and  by  President  Lincoln's  own  ap 
pointment  a  general  in  the  Union  Army,  was  making 
himself  disliked  by  his  airs  of  superiority.  Lincoln, 
whose  spirit  of  fun  was  apt  to  get  him  into  trouble, 
tfrote  for  the  Whig  paper  a  latter  which  he  signed 


MARRIAGE  AND  CONGRESS  39 

"Aunt  Rebecca,"  and  in  which  he  made  sport  of 
Shields.  This  letter  Miss  Mary  Todd  and  another 
Springfield  belle  followed  up  with  one  or  two  more  of 
the  same  sort.  They  made  the  people  laugh  at  Shields, 
and  they  made  Shields  angry.  To  protect  the  young 
women,  Lincoln  let  Shields  believe  that  he  was  wholly 
to  blame.  Shields  challenged  Lincoln  to  fight  a  duel. 
Lincoln,  being  the  challenged  party,  had  the  choice  of 
weapons  and  chose  broadswords.  When  we  remember 
that  Lincoln  was  a  giant,  six  feet  and  four  inches  tail, 
and  strong  enough  to  lift  a  load  of  six  hundred  pounds, 
and  that  Shields  was  a  little  man  with  short  arms  and 
short  legs,  we  can  believe  that  in  calling  for  broadswords 
Lincoln  was  really  preventing  a  fight,  for  he  knew  that 
Shields's  sword  could  not  touch  him  at  any  point,  while 
he  with  his  gigantic  arms  could  disarm  his  opponent 
in  a  moment.  Ic  was  his  way  of  "  laughing  the  case 
out  of  court."  The  duel  never  took  place.  Lincoln  had 
made  Shields  look  very  foolish,  but  he  had  gone  far 
enough  in  the  affair  to  be  heartily  ashamed  of  himself. 
One  lasting  result  of  the  Shields  duel  was  that  it 
brought  Lincoln  and  Mary  Todd  together.  Not  long 
afterward  they  were  married.  Mrs.  Lincoln  was  young 
and  handsome  and  proud,  and  she  was  ambitious  both 
for  herself  and  for  her  husband.  She  had  accepted 
attentions  from  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  the  most  admired 
public  man  in  Illinois,  but  she  was  saying  already, 
what  her  friends  thought  very  foolish,  that  she  had  pre 
ferred  Lincoln  because  he  would  live  to  become  Presi 
dent  of  the  United  States.  They  had  four  boys,  only 
one  of  whom,  Robert  Todd  Lincoln,  lived  to  manhood. 
The  boys  were  their  father's  comrades,  and  brought 
into  his  very  serious  and  sometimes  unhappy  life  much 
genuine  fun. 


10  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

For  eight  years  Lincoln  had  served  the  people  of 
Illinois  in  the  State  legislature.  As  the  nominee  of  the 
Whig  party  for  presidential  elector,  he  had  spoken  in 
all  parts  of  the  State  in  the  exciting  Harrison  cam 
paign  of  1840.  The  people  everywhere  wanted  to  hear 
him,  for  his  speeches  were  carefully  prepared,  and  they 
gave  the  people  something  to  think  about.  In  Congress, 
at  Washington,  things  were  being  done  that  made  men 
anxious  and  uneasy,  and  no  one  understood  better  than 
Lincoln  the  meaning  of  events,  or  saw  more  clearly 
than  he  what  the  future  had  in  store  for  the  American 
people. 

In  1844,  the  Whig  party  nominated  Henry  Clay  for 
President.  Excepting  only  Andrew  Jackson,  no  pub 
lic  man  had  been  so  loved  as  Henry  Clay.  He  was  one 
of  the  greatest  of  American  orators,  and  school-boys 
liked  to  declaim  his  speeches  on  Friday  afternoons. 
But  he  was  more  than  an  orator ;  for  he  was  the  head 
of  a  great  political  party,  and,  notwithstanding  the  fact 
that  he  represented  a  slave  State  in  Congress,  he  was 
in  sympathy  with  freedom.  This  power  he  had  been  able 
to  use  to  keep  the  friends  and  the  enemies  of  slavery 
from  plunging  the  country  into  war.  It  was  through  his 
efforts,  twenty-four  years  before,  that  an  agreement 
between  North  and  South  had  been  reached  which 
men  had  hoped  would  end  the  slavery  struggle  for  all 
time.  This  was  known  as  the  Missouri  Compromise. 
Missouri  had  asked  admission  into  the  Union,  and 
the  Northern  people  objected  because  Missouri  would 
have  to  come  in  as  a  slave  State.  The  Missouri  Com 
promise  provided  that  Missouri  should  be  admitted  as 
a  slave  State,  on  condition  that,  in  the  future,  all  new 
States  lying  north  of  the  south  line  of  Missouri  and 
west  of  its  west  line  should  come  in  as  free  States.  It 


MARRIAGE  AND   CONGRESS  41 

was  largely  because  of  his  connection  with  the  Mis 
souri  Compromise  that  Henry  Clay  was  so  greatly 
loved. 

When  Clay  was  nominated,  Lincoln  was  no  longer 
in  the  legislature.  He  had  become  more  interested  in 
national  politics,  and  his  services  being  needed  by  the 
Whig  party,  he  was  again  put  on  the  electoral  ticket 
and  sent  to  make  speeches  in  every  part  of  Illinois. 
The  people  outside  the  State  were  asking  for  him,  and 
he  went  back  to  the  old  home  country  in  Indiana,  near 
Rockport  and  Gentryville.  To  be  able  to  campaign  for 
Henry  Clay,  whom  he  idolized,  and  to  go  back  to  Indi 
ana,  where  he  was  remembered  as  "  Josiah  Crawford's 
hired  man,"  and  find  himself  respected  as  an  orator 
and  a  party  leader,  seemed  to  him  to  be  the  realization 
of  his  fondest  ambition.  Fourteen  years  had  made  great 
changes  in  the  young  laborer  who  had  begun  to  find 
his  fortune  in  Illinois,  and  they  had  changed  the  little 
circle  of  his  boyhood  friends.  In  his  sensitive  nature 
these  changes  stirred  a  poetic  feeling  that  found  ex 
pression  in  some  verses  that  he  wrote  on  "  Memory," 
at  his  old  home  at  Gentryville. 

Among  the  people  of  the  Northern  States  there  had 
been  growing  a  feeling  that  it  was  wicked  to  keep 
human  beings  in  slavery.  Along  the  Ohio  River  and 
the  north  line  of  Maryland  was  a  boundary,  known  as 
Mason  and  Dixon's  Line,  which  separated  the  free 
States  from  the  slave  States.  South  of  this  line  the 
States  were  represented  in  Congress  by  men  who  fa 
vored  slavery,  and  who,  because  the  feeling  in  the  North 
was  growing  more  and  more  unfriendly,  were  looking 
in  every  direction  for  some  means  of  increasing  the 
number  of  States  in  which  slavery  would  be  permitted. 
They  knew  they  could  not  persuade  the  States  north 


42  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

of  Mason  and  Dixon's  Line  to  permit  slavery  within 
their  borders,  but  they  believed  that  if  they  could  get 
slavery  introduced  into  the  Territories,  they  would  in 
time  admit  these  Territories  as  slave  States.  As  every 
State  sent  two  Senators  to  Congress,  the  more  Sena 
tors  there  were  who  favored  slavery,  the  longer  would 
the  slave  States  keep  their  control  in  national  affairs. 
There  had  been  more  free  States  than  slave  States,  but 
while  practically  everybody  in  the  slave  States  favored 
slavery,  the  feeling  in  the  free  States  was  divided. 
In  the  free  States,  some  men,  known  as  abolitionists^ 
wished  to  destroy  slavery  at  once  all  over  the  land, 
while  others  were  content  if  they  could  keep  slavery 
from  being  introduced  into  the  Territories.  In  the  free 
States,  too,  there  were  large  numbers  of  men  who  sym 
pathized  with  the  South.  The  aim  of  the  slaveholders, 
then,  was  to  push  slavery  into  the  Territories,  and 
finally  into  all  the  States,  while  the  aim  of  the  men 
with  whom  Lincoln  had  allied  himself  was  to  keep 
slavery  where  it  was,  in  the  hope  that  with  the  admis 
sion  of  the  new  Territories  as  free  States  the  power  of 
slavery  in  national  politics  would  grow  gradually  but 
surely  less. 

Many  of  the  slaves  in  the  South  were  well  cared 
for ;  probably  only  a  few  masters  were  cruel  to  their 
negroes.  But  wherever  there  were  slaves,  whether 
treated  kindly  or  harshly,  under  the  law  the  negro  had 
no  rights  which  the  white  man  was  bound  to  respect. 
It  was  not  because  the  masters  were  cruel,  but  because 
the  law  permitted  them  to  do  what  they  pleased  with 
their  slaves,  treating  them  as  property  and  not  as  hu 
man  beings,  and  because  this  view  of  the  law  seemed 
morally  wrong,  that  the  movement  against  slavery  was 
becoming  more  powerful  in  the  Northern  States.  It 


MARRIAGE  AND   CONGRESS  43 

was  not  because  the  slaveholders  actually  did  wrong, 
but  because  the  law  permitted  them  to  do  wrong,  that 
men  were  beginning  to  protest  against  the  extension  of 
slavery. 

Henry  Clay,  the  Whig  candidate  for  the  presidency, 
was  defeated  by  James  K.  Polk  of  Tennessee,  a  friend 
of  the  slaveholders.  The  election  of  Polk  encouraged 
the  politicians  in  the  Southern  States  to  bring  on  a 
war  with  Mexico,  in  the  expectation  that  the  success 
of  the  war  would  add  Texas  to  the  Union  as  a  slave 
State.  It  was  a  war  for  the  extension  of  slavery  which 
Lincoln  and  his  friends  believed  was  altogether  wrong. 
Lincoln  determined  to  go  to  Congress  and  fight  the 
proposed  wrong.  He  was  elected  in  1846,  and  was  the 
only  Whig  Congressman  from  Illinois.  His  eight  years 
in  the  State  legislature,  together  with  his  close  study 
of  politics  and  the  history  of  his  country,  helped  make 
his  influence  felt  at  Washington.  His  old  rival,  Doug 
las,  was  elected  the  same  year  from  another  district, 
but  before  his  term  commenced  he  was  made  Senator. 

When  Lincoln  got  to  Washington,  he  found  the  slave- 
holding  interests  protected  by  law  on  all  sides.  Although 
the  Whigs  were  in  the  majority,  there  was  nothing  they 
could  do  to  put  an  end  to  slavery.  The  city  of  Wash 
ington  was  in  a  little  District  ten  miles  square,  sur 
rounded  by  the  slave  territory  of  Virginia  and  Mary 
land.  Just  in  sight  of  his  boarding-place  Lincoln  saw 
what  he  described  as  "  a  sort  of  negro  livery  stable," 
where  black  men  and  women  were  bought  and  sold. 
This  District  was  under  the  control  of  Congress.  So 
Lincoln  conceived  the  idea  of  persuading  the  people 
of  the  District  to  sell  their  slaves  and  of  paying  for 
them  out  of  the  United  States  Treasury,  and  forbidding 
slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia  for  all  time  to  come. 


44  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

But  Lincoln's  plan  failed.  People  did  not  yet  fully 
realize  the  wickedness  of  slavery ;  Lincoln  saw  that 
something  more  must  be  done  to  awaken  men's  con 
sciences,  or  slavery  would  not  only  keep  its  hold  on 
the  South  and  in  the  new  State  of  Texas,  but  would 
spread  into  the  Territories  and  some  day  even  into  the 
free  States.  The  Democratic  party  was  in  power  and 
was  controlled  by  the  South,  and  the  Whig  party  was 
unwilling  to  take  sides  on  the  great  question.  A  few 
brave  men  were  opposing  slavery,  but  there  was  no 
political  party  organized  to  carry  on  the  fight.  The 
Republican  party  was  not  yet  born. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

RIDING   THE    CIRCUIT 

WITH  Texas  admitted  into  the  Union  as  a  slave 
State,  the  troubles  between  the  South  and  the  North 
seemed  at  an  end.  The  South  had  gained  what  it 
wanted,  while  the  North  still  had  the  assurance  that 
the  Missouri  Compromise  would  save  Kansas  and  Ne 
braska  and  all  the  new  Territories  to  freedom.  Politics 
settled  down  to  a  struggle  among  the  politicians  for 
the  offices.  Lincoln  went  home  to  Springfield  and  took 
up  again  the  practice  of  the  law. 

For  eight  years  he  devoted  his  whole  time  to  his 
profession.  Innumerable  stories  are  told  of  his  law 
practice  during  these  years.  The  judge,  David  Davis, 
afterward  a  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States,  held  court  in  fourteen  different  coun 
ties  in  central  Illinois.  Every  week  he  would  move 
on  to  the  next  county  seat,  the  leading  members  of 
the  bar  going  with  him.  They  rode  horseback  over  the 
prairie,  and  filled  in  the  spare  hours  as  they  rode,  or 
consoled  themselves  for  the  poor  fare  at  the  country 
taverns,  by  telling  stories  or  talking  politics.  The  law 
yers  who  rode  the  circuit  with  Lincoln  and  Judge 
Davis  were  men  of  ability,  who  had  to  try  their  cases 
and  argue  their  points  of  law  without  the  help  of  books. 
"  Rough-and-ready  "  practitioners,  they  had  learned  to 
reason  out  their  cases  upon  broad  principles,  and  to 
take  care  of  themselves  and  of  their  client's  interests 
by  thinking  clearly  and  quickly  upon  their  feet.  Lin 
coln  seemed  particularly  well  fitted  to  succeed  undef 


46  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

these  conditions,  and  his  reputation  as  a  lawyer  grew 
steadily. 

It  is  said  of  him  that  he  could  try  a  good  case  better 
than  any  of  the  others,  but  that,  when  convinced  that 
his  client  was  in  the  wrong,  he  would  withdraw  from 
the  case  rather  than  show  the  court,  as  he  was  sure 
to  do,  that  he  believed  his  client  was  wrong..  Once  a 
mean  man  came  to  engage  him  to  sue  a  widow.  After 
hearing  his  story  Lincoln  said :  "  Yes,  there  is  a  rea 
sonable  chance  of  gaining  your  case  for  you  !  I  can  set 
a  whole  township  at  loggerheads.  I  can  distress  a  poor 
widow  and  her  six  fatherless  children,  and  so  get  for 
you  six  hundred  dollars  which  rightfully  belongs  as 
much  to  her  as  to  you.  But  you  should  remember  that 
some  things  that  are  legally  right  are  not  morally 
right.  I  shall  not  take  your  case,  but  I  '11  give  you 
some  advice  for  nothing.  You  seem  to  be  an  active, 
energetic  man.  I  would  advise  you  to  try  your  hand  at 
making  six  hundred  dollars  some  other  way." 

He  was  fair  and  even  generous  to  the  other  side 
unless  he  believed  there  was  fraud  or  meanness  for 
him  to  punish.  Then  he  was  merciless.  A  paper  of  his 
has  been  preserved  which  gives  the  notes  of  a  closing 
speech  he  made  to  a  jury.  It  was  a  case  in  which  he 
was  attorney  for  the  widow  of  a  Revolutionary  soldier 
who  had  been  cheated  out  of  her  pension  money  by 
a  dishonest  agent.  His  notes  for  his  argument  read : 
"  No  contract.  — Not  professional  services.  —  Unrea 
sonable  charge.  —  Money  retained  by  defendant.  — 
Not  given  by  plaintiff.  —  Revolutionary  War.  —  De 
scribe  Valley  Forge,  privations,  ice,  soldier's  bleeding 
feet.  —  Plaintiff's  husband.  —  Soldier  leaving  home  for 
army.  —  SKIN  DEFENDANT.  —  Close."  Lincoln  was 
deeply  stirred  in  delivering  this  speech,  and  the  juij/ 


RIDING  THE  CIRCUIT  47 

were  in  tears,  while  the  miserable  pension  agent  whom 
Lincoln  had  "  skinned  "  suffered  tortures  under  the 
operation. 

Lincoln  was  often  criticised  by  the  other  lawyers 
because  he  charged  such  small  fees.  They  declared  that 
it  was  no  wonder  he  was  poor.  On  one  occasion  Judge 
Davis  put  him  through  a  mock  trial  for  this  offense, 
and,  in  fun,  censured  him  at  the  bar  of  the  court.  On 
another  occasion  he  embarrassed  one  of  his  law  part 
ners  by  making  him  pay  back  half  of  a  fee  that  a 
client  had  willingly  paid.  "  The  money  comes  out  of 
the  pocket  of  a  poor  crazy  girl,"  Lincoln  said,  "and  I 
would  rather  starve  than  swindle  her  in  this  way." 

He  was  absolutely  fair  with  the  court.  Once  a  part 
ner  prepared  for  filing  in  a  case  an  answer  which  was 
not  founded  on  facts,  and  Lincoln  made  him  withdraw 
it.  "  You  know  it's  a  sham,"  he  said,  "and  a  sham  is 
very  often  but  another  name  for  a  lie.  Don't  let  it  go 
on  record.  The  cursed  thing  may  come  staring  us  in 
the  face  long  after  this  suit  has  been  forgotten." 

He  had  heard  the  word  "  demonstrate  "  as  one  of  the 
things  that  were  done  in  geometry.  He  made  up  his 
mind,  as  he  had  in  his  boyhood,  that  he  would  learn 
how  to  demonstrate  his  points,  that  is,  make  them  so 
clear  that  men  could  not  help  accepting  them.  He  got 
himself  a  copy  of  Euclid's  geometry  and,  as  he  rode 
the  circuit,  he  committed  to  memory  many  of  Euclid's 
demonstrations.  He  was  still  learning  how  to  bound 
his  thought  on  all  sides.  His  speech  became  so  crystal 
clear  that  men  said,  "  If  Lincoln  is  in  the  case,  there 
will  be  no  trouble  in  understanding  what  it  is  all 
about."  He  once  said  to  his  young  partner,  Mr.  Hern- 
don,  as  he  found  fault  with  his  high-flown,  oratorical 
way  of  arguing  his  cases :  "  Billy,  don't  shoot  too  high 


48  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

• —  aim  lower,  and  the  common  people  will  understand 
you.  They  are  the  ones  you  want  to  reach.  The  edu 
cated  and  refined  people  will  understand  you  anyway." 
His  reading  and  observation  had  taught  him  that  one 
of  the  best  ways  to  make  a  point  stick  in  memory  is  to 
illustrate  it  by  a  story,  and  he  constantly  told  stories, 
both  in  his  speeches  and  conversation.  Court  in  the  old 
eighth  circuit,  with  Lincoln  and  his  colleagues  travel 
ing  about,  eating  and  sleeping  together,  and  trying 
their  cases  together,  day  after  day,  week  in  and  week 
out,  and  telling  stories  wherever  they  met,  was  not  a 
dignified,  solemn  place  like  the  chambers  of  the  Su 
preme  Court  of  the  United  States.  Lincoln  was  irre 
pressible.  When  he  came  on  the  scene  he  would  intro 
duce  himself  in  this  fashion,  "  Well,  fellows,  are  n't 
you  glad  I  've  come  ?  "  and  then,  out  of  his  unlimited 
store,  he  would  bring  forth  a  new  story  that  would 
sometimes  make  the  good-natured  judge  adjourn  court 
to  hear  it. 

The  clerk  of  the  court  tells  how  he  was  once  fined 
for  laughing  out  in  the  midst  of  a  trial.  "  Lincoln  had 
just  come  in,"  he  tells  us,  "  and  leaning  over  my  desk 
had  told  me  a  story  so  irresistibly  funny  that  I  broke 
into  a  loud  laugh.  Judge  Davis  called  me  to  order  in 
haste,  as  he  said  sternly,  4  This  must  be  stopped.  Mr. 
Lincoln,  you  are  constantly  disturbing  this  court  with 
your  stories.  Mr.  Clerk,  you  may  fine  yourself  five 
dollars  for  your  disturbance.'  I  apologized,  but  told 
the  judge  the  story  was  worth  the  money.  A  few  min 
utes  later  he  called  me  to  him.  4  What  was  that  story 
Lincoln  told  you  ? '  he  asked.  I  told  him,  and  he 
laughed  aloud  in  spite  of  himself.  4  You  need  not  pay 
that  fine,'  he  said." 

In  the  earlier  years  of  his  practice.  Lincoln  used  his 


RIDING  THE  CIRCUIT  49 

stories  with  great  effect  in  his  jury  speeches.  Once  he 
was  trying  to  make  plain  that  his  client,  on  trial  for 
striking  a  man,  had  done  the  deed  in  an  effort  to  defend 
himself,  and  illustrated  his  point  by  saying  that  his 
client  was  in  the  fix  of  the  man  who  while  carrying  a 
pitchfork  along  a  country  road  was  suddenly  attacked 
by  a  vicious  dog.  In  the  trouble  that  followed,  the 
prongs  of  the  pitchfork  killed  the  dog.  "  What  made 
you  kill  my  dog  ?  "  the  farmer  angrily  cried.  "  What 
made  him  try  to  bite  me?"  "But  why  didn't  you  go 
at  him  with  the  other  end  of  the  pitchfork  ?  "  "  Why 
did  n't  he  come  at  me  with  the  other  end  of  the  dog  ?  " 
The  jury  saw  what  self-defense  meant. 

In  one  of  his  cases  he  made  fun  of  an  opponent's 
long  speeches.  "  My  friend,"  he  said,  "  is  peculiarly 
constructed.  When  he  begins  to  speak,  his  brain  stops 
working.  He  makes  me  think  of  a  little  old  steamboat 
we  used  to  have  on  the  Sangamon  River  in  the  early 
days.  It  had  a  five-foot  boiler  and  a  seven-foot  whistle, 
and  every  time  it  whistled,  it  stopped." 

His  practical  sense  and  his  understanding  of  human 
nature  enabled  him  to  save  the  life  of  the  son  of  his 
old  Clary's  Grove  friend,  Jack  Armstrong,  who  was  on 
trial  for  murder.  Lincoln,  learning  of  it,  went  to  the 
old  mother  who  had  been  kind  to  him  in  the  days  of  his 
boyhood  poverty  and  promised  her  that  he  would  get 
her  boy  free.  The  witnesses  were  sure  that  Armstrong 
was  guilty,  and  one  of  them  declared  that  he  had  seen 
the  fatal  blow  struck.  It  was  late  at  night,  he  said,  and 
the  light  of  the  full  moon  had  made  it  possible  for  him 
to  see  the  crime  committed.  Lincoln,  on  cross-exami 
nation,  asked  him  only  questions  enough  to  make  the 
jury  see  that  it  was  the  full  moon  that  made  it  possible 
for  the  witness  to  see  what  occurred,  got  him  to  say  two 


50  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

or  three  times  that  he  was  sure  of  it,  and  seemed  to  give 
up  any  further  effort  to  save  the  boy.  But  when  the 
evidence  was  finished  and  Lincoln's  time  came  to  make 
his  argument,  he  called  for  an  almanac,  which  the  clerk 
of  the  court  had  ready  for  him,  and  handed  it  to  the 
jury.  They  saw  at  once  that  on  the  night  of  the  mur 
der  there  was  no  moon  at  all.  They  were  satisfied  that 
the  witness  had  told  what  was  not  true.  Lincoln's  case 
was  won. 

He  argued  his  cases  in  a  straightforward  way,  with 
out  oratorical  effort,  shunning  long  words  and  strange 
expressions,  using  the  language  of  the  Bible,  or  illus 
trating  what  he  had  to  say  with  an  apt  story,  talking 
with  the  court  and  the  jury  as  a  man  would  talk  famil 
iarly  with  a  group  of  old  friends  and  neighbors,  and 
"  demonstrating  "  his  points  as  Euclid  had  taught  him. 

Mr.  Herndon,  who  continued  as  Lincoln's  law  part 
ner  during  the  later  years  of  his  life,  has  told  of  his 
way  of  keeping  a  crowd  amused:  "I  have  seen  him 
surrounded  by  as  many  as  two  or  three  hundred  per 
sons,  all  deeply  interested  in  the  outcome  of  a  story. 
His  power  of  mimicry  and  his  manner  of  recital  were 
remarkable.  All  his  features  seemed  to  take  part  in 
the  performance.  As  he  neared  the  point  of  the  joke, 
or  story,  every  vestige  of  seriousness  disappeared  from 
his  face.  His  little  gray  eyes  sparkled  ;  a  smile  seemed 
to  gather  up,  curtain-like,  the  corners  of  his  mouth  ;  his 
frame  quivered  with  suppressed  excitement ;  and  when 
the  point  or  4  nub '  of  the  story,  as  he  called  it,  came, 
no  one's  laugh  was  heartier  than  his." 

In  those  days  he  seemed  not  to  know,  or  care,  how 
he  looked.  He  was  poor,  and  he  had  a  growing  family. 
His  very  poverty  made  friends  for  him.  His  dress  was 
simple.  His  hat  was  rusty  and  faded  with  age.  He 


RIDING  THE  CIRCUIT  51 

wore  a  gray  shawl.  His  coat  hung  loosely  on  his  gaunt 
frame,  and  his  trousers  were  always  too  short.  He 
carried  a  faded  green  umbrella,  with  the  letters  "  A. 
Lincoln,"  sewed  on  in  white  muslin.  Its  handle  was 
gone,  and  it  was  usually  held  together  with  a  bit  of 
string. 

With  all  his  traveling  about  over  the  circuit,  there 
were  still  four  or  five  months  in  every  year  when  court 
was  not  in  session.  This  gave  the  lawyers  time  for 
other  things.  Lincoln's  spare  days  were  spent  "mous 
ing  about  the  libraries  in  the  State  House."  He  was 
studying  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  mak 
ing  himself  familiar  with  his  country's  history,  and,  in 
season  and  out  of  season,  studying  the  slavery  question. 
It  was  not  in  his  years  of  successful  law  practice,  when 
he  was  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  bar  in  Illinois,  that 
he  proved  his  greatness  as  a  lawyer,  so  much  as  it  was 
in  his  complete  mastery  of  the  Constitution  in  its  rela 
tion  to  the  slavery  question,  as  he  afterward  revealed 
it  in  his  debates  with  Douglas.  In  the  prairies  of  Illi 
nois,  sometimes  dreaming,  sometimes  thinking  deeply, 
this  country  attorney  became  one  of  the  learned  con 
stitutional  lawyers  of  his  time. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  REPUBLICAN  PARTY  IS  BORN 

BUSY  as  he  was  in  the  practice  of  law,  Lincoln 
kept  on  studying  the  signs  of  the  times.  The  speeches 
of  abolitionist  leaders  came  into  his  hands  and  he  read 
regularly  two  Southern  newspapers.  He  wrote  an 
occasional  political  editorial  for  a  Springfield  paper 
and  he  made  a  few  campaign  speeches,  but  his  real 
interest  was  in  the  practice  of  his  profession. 

While  Lincoln  was  a  looker-on  at  the  great  drama 
of  national  politics,  his  old-time  rival,  Stephen  A. 
Douglas,  Senator  from  Illinois,  was  becoming  one  of 
the  chief  actors,  restraining,  as  well  as  he  could,  the 
growing  feeling  of  discontent  that  the  anti-slavery 
spirit  in  the  North  had  bred,  nnd  casting  about  for 
some  safe  way  in  which  the  slave  States  might  be  held 
loyal  to  the  Union.  Already  the  politicians  in  the 
South  were  threatening  to  carry  their  States  out  of 
the  Union  unless  the  demands  of  slavery  were  granted. 
Already  Douglas  was  dreaming  that  he  himself  might 
be  the  means  of  holding  South  and  North  together, 
and  become  the  choice  of  both  sections  for  President. 

The  admission  of  Texas  as  a  slave  State  had  strength 
ened  the  slave  power,  but  it  had  not  satisfied  it.  The 
threats  of  secession  continued.  Clay  and  Webster  and 
Douglas  and  others  of  those  who  dreaded  war  and  were 
willing  to  yield  almost  anything  to  preserve  the  Union, 
devised  a  new  measure  called  the  Compromise  of  1850, 
the  effect  of  which  was  to  increase  the  feeling  between 
the  North  and  the  South.  One  of  its  features  was  the 


THE  REPUBLICAN   PARTY  IS   BORN        5S 

passing  of  a  new  Fugitive  Slave  Law,  which  compelled 
citizens  in  the  free  States  to  help  the  officers  of  the 
United  States  capture  runaway  slaves  and  send  them 
&ack  to  their  masters.  Men  of  the  North  had  not  seen 
human  beings  bought  and  sold,  and,  because  they  knew 
little  about  slavery,  had  thought  little  about  it.  Some 
who  would  not  have  been  willing  to  own  slaves  believed 
that  perhaps  the  negroes  were  better  off  as  slaves  than 
as  free  men.  But  when  they  saw  a  runaway  black  man 
flying  through  the  streets,  and  learned  that  they  were 
bound  by  law  to  help  catch  him  and  send  him  back  to 
life-long  bondage,  they  began  to  awaken  to  the  serious 
ness  of  slavery  as  a  moral  question.  Wherever  this 
law  was  enforced,  the  anti-slavery  feeling  became  more 
bitter. 

But  the  passing  of  a  new  Fugitive  Slave  Law  did 
not  satisfy  the  South.  If  slavery  was  right,  as  many 
Southerners  believed,  it  seemed  hard  that  a  slaveholder 
should  lose  his  slaves  when  he  took  them  into  free  ter 
ritory.  So  the  Southern  leaders  in  Congress,  believing 
that  the  anti-slavery  spirit  was  unjust,  sought  every 
opportunity  to  strengthen  the  political  power  of  the 
South,  and  compelled  the  passage  of  a  law  repealing  the 
Missouri  Compromise  and  clearing  the  way,  as  they 
hoped,  for  introducing  slavery  into  the  vast  territories 
west  and  northwest  of  Missouri.  Nebraska,  as  that 
country  was  called,  was  unsettled  except  by  Indians. 
It  was  not  to  be  opened  for  settlement  until  Congress 
could  decide  whether  it  was  to  continue  free  or  becomt 
slave  territory  like  Missouri.  In  1854,  Senator  Douglas 
secured  the  passage  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill,  open 
ing  Nebraska  to  settlement  and  leaving  to  the  new  set 
tlers  the  decision  of  the  question  whether  there  should 
be  slaves  in  the  Territory  or  not.  This  plan  of  having 


54  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  people  of  the  Territory  settle  the  slavery  ques 
tion  for  themselves  was  called  "popular  sovereignty." 
Douglas  believed  that  to  leave  to  the  people  most  con 
cerned  —  not  counting  the  slaves  as  people,  of  course, 
—  the  decision  of  this  troublesome  question  was  fair 
to  everybody,  and  he  hoped  that  the  North  as  well  as 
the  South  would  be  satisfied  with  it.  But  the  South 
protested  at  once  that  slavery  could  gain  nothing,  for 
most  of  the  voters  in  the  Territories  would  favor  free 
dom.  And  in  the  North  the  enemies  of  slavery  believed 
that  they  saw  in  Douglas's  "  popular  sovereignty  "  one 
more  surrender  of  principle  to  the  slave  power.  If  slav 
ery  was  wrong,  they  argued,  why  should  the  people  of 
the  Territories  be  allowed  to  make  it  lawful  ?  This  was 
the  question  that  Douglas  had  to  answer  when  he  came 
back  to  Illinois  on  the  adjournment  of  Congress  in 
1854.  A  crisis  had  come.  The  enemies  of  slavery  were 
at  last  ready  to  say  to  the  slave  power  in  Congress, 
"  Thus  far  shalt  thou  go  and  no  farther !  " 

Lincoln  saw  the  danger  and  threw  himself  into  poli 
tics  again,  heart  and  soul.  The  "  irrepressible  conflict" 
between  slavery  and  freedom  had  begun  in  earnest.  It 
was  not  long  after  this  that  he  wrote  a  letter  to  his 
friend  Joshua  Speed,  who  had  gone  back  to  Kentucky 
to  live.  In  this  letter  he  showed  how  the  Fugitive  Slave 
Law  and  thr  other  laws  in  favor  of  slavery  had  stirred 
his  feelings.  He  wrote :  "  I  confess  I  hate  to  see  the 
poor  creatures  hunted  down  and  caught  and  carried 
back  to  their  stripes  and  unrequited  toil ;  but  I  bite 
my  lips  and  keep  quiet.  ...  It  is  not  fair  for  you  to 
assume  that  I  have  no  interest  in  a  thing  which  has, 
and  continually  exercises,  the  power  of  making  me 
miserable.  You  ought  rather  to  appreciate  how  much 
the  great  body  of  the  Northern  people  do  crucify  their 


THE   REPUBLICAN   PARTY  IS  BORN        55 

feelings  in  order  to  maintain  their  loyalty  to  the  Con 
stitution  and  the  Union." 

He  was  fair  enough  to  see,  at  the  same  time,  that 
there  was  a  sincere  difference  of  opinion  between  the 
men  of  the  South  and  the  men  of  the  North.  He  at 
tacked  slavery  as  an  institution,  and  tried  to  persuade 
men  to  join  him  in  his  effort  to  keep  slavery  from  grow 
ing.  But  he  had  no  unkind  words  for  those  who  did 
not  agree  with  him.  One  of  his  addresses,  delivered  at 
Peoria,  in  1854,  makes  this  clear :  "  Let  me  say  that  I 
think  I  have  no  prejudice  against  the  Southern  people. 
They  are  just  what  we  would  be  in  their  situation.  If 
slavery  did  not  now  exist  among  them,  they  would  not 
introduce  it.  If  it  did  now  exist  among  us,  we  should 
not  instantly  give  it  up." 

The  passage  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill  and  the 
repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  largely  through 
Douglas's  efforts,  created  instant  alarm  in  Illinois. 
Party  feeling  had  not  run  high  for  many  years.  Doug 
las,  who  was  believed  at  heart  to  be  opposed  to  the 
extension  of  slavery,  had  enjoyed  the  confidence  of  the 
State  in  a  remarkable  way.  Suddenly  the  entire  situa 
tion  changed.  Thousands  of  Illinois  Democrats  who 
were  opposed  to  slavery  began  to  doubt  Douglas  and 
to  be  dissatisfied  with  his  leadership. 

The  senatorial  term  of  James  Shields,  Lincoln's  an 
cient  adversary  and  Douglas's  friend,  came  to  an  end, 
and  Lincoln  was  the  choice  of  the  Whigs  to  succeed 
him.  When  the  legislature  met  to  elect  a  Senator, 
Lincoln  needed  five  more  votes  to  secure  an  election. 
There  were  five  anti-slavery  Democrats  in  the  legisla 
ture,  but  they  were  unwilling  to  vote  for  Lincoln  and 
held  out  for  Lyman  Trumbull.  Trumbull's  five  votes 
and  Lincoln's  forty-four  were  enough  to  control  the 


56  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

election.  So  Lincoln,  fearful  lest  a  Douglas  Democrat 
might  be  elected,  made  haste  to  withdraw  from  the 
race  and  to  persuade  his  friends  to  vote  for  Trumbull. 
In  this  way  Lincoln  suffered  one  more  disappointment, 
but,  by  securing  Trumbull's  election,  gained  for  free 
dom  one  more  vote  in  the  United  States  Senate. 

Up  to  this  time  in  the  Northern  States,  party  lines 
had  not  been  drawn  on  the  slavery  question.  There 
were  Slavery  Democrats  and  Free  Soil  Democrats, 
and  there  were  Slavery  Whigs  and  Free  Soil  Whigs. 
But  by  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  and  the 
adoption  of  measures  which  made  slavery  possible  in 
Kansas  and  Nebraska,  the  voters  of  Illinois  were  so 
aroused  that  they  refused  to  interest  themselves  in  any 
other  political  question.  The  Whig  party  began  to  go 
to  pieces,  and  many  Democrats  questioned  Douglas's 
leadership  for  the  first  time.  Anti-slavery  men  broke 
away  from  both  Whigs  and  Democrats  and  organized 
the  Republican  party,  whose  one  aim  was  to  keep  slav 
ery  out  of  the  Territories.  The  friends  of  slavery  within 
the  Whig  party  in  Illinois  became  Douglas  Democrats, 
while  the  Republicans  chose  Lincoln  for  their  leader. 

From  this  time  until  Lincoln  defeated  Douglas  for 
the  presidency  in  1860,  there  was  only  one  great  na 
tional  issue  —  the  slavery  question ;  and  the  two  menv 
Lincoln  and  Douglas,  by  virtue  of  their  leadership, 
were  constantly  pitted  against  each  other,  the  one  de 
claring  that  slavery  was  a  moral  wrong  and  demanding 
that  it  be  kept  out  of  the  Territories,  the  other  saying 
nothing  about  the  right  or  wrong  of  slavery,  but  insist 
ing  that  the  people  of  the  Territories  be  allowed  to 
decide  for  or  against  it  as  they  saw  fit,  and  adding 
that  he  "  did  not  care  whether  slavery  was  voted  up 
or  voted  down." 


THE  REPUBLICAN  PARTY  IS  BORN        57 

The  first  national  convention  of  the  new  Republican 
party  was  held,  in  1856,  at  Philadelphia.  It  named 
John  C.  Fremont  for  President  and  William  L.  Day 
ton  for  Vice-President.  In  this  convention  Lincoln 
received  110  votes  for  Vice-President.  He  was  evi 
dently  not  disappointed  with  the  result,  for  he  wrote 
to  one  of  the  delegates  afterward :  "  When  you  meet 
Judge  Dayton,  present  him  my  respects,  and  tell  him 
I  think  him  a  far  better  man  than  I  for  the  position 
he  is  in." 

The  presidential  campaign  of  1856  was,  from  the 
first,  a  straight-out  fight  between  the  friends  and  the 
enemies  of  slavery.  James  Buchanan  led  the  slavery 
forces  and  John  C.  Fremont  commanded  the  hearty 
support  of  nearly  all  the  anti-slavery  people.  A  small 
number  of  Whigs,  still  unwilling  to  take  sides,  either 
against  slavery  or  in  favor  of  it,  nominated  Millard  Fill- 
more  for  President,  and  adopted  a  platform,  charging 
the  other  parties  with  trying  to  destroy  the  Union. 
The  plan  of  the  Democrats  to  give  over  to  slavery  the 
new  States  of  Kansas  and  Nebraska,  if  the  people  liv 
ing  there  should  vote  that  way,  and  the  declaration  of 
Senator  Douglas  that  he  did  not  care  which  way  the 
people  of  Kansas  and  Nebraska  voted,  filled  Lincoln 
with  indignation.  He  went  into  the  political  struggle 
with  a  grim  determination  to  "  demonstrate  "  to  the 
people  of  his  State  that  slavery  was  wrong. 

The  idea  of  celebrating  the  Fourth  of  July  by  read 
ing  the  Declaration  of  Independence  to  the  people  and 
proclaiming  that  "  all  men  are  created  equal,"  in  a 
land  where  slavery  was  permitted  and  where  new  ter 
ritory  was  being  turned  over  forever  to  the  control 
of  the  slave  power,  seemed  horrible  to  him.  In  bit 
terness  he  exclaimed :  "  The  Fourth  of  July  has  not 


58  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

quite  dwindled  away;    it  is   still  a  great  day  —  for 
burning  firecrackers  ! ! !  " 

The  time  was  at  hand  when  men  could  no  longer 
refuse  to  take  sides.  Buchanan  was  elected,  but  the 
Republicans  had  cast  nearly  a  million  and  a  half  votes. 
Lincoln  and  the  other  enemies  of  slavery  felt  that  their 
fight  for  freedom  had  not  been  in  vain.  In  his  next 
great  public  address  in  the  summer  of  1858,  Lincoln 
spoke  these  words  of  cheer  to  his  followers :  "  Two 
years  ago  the  Republicans  of  the  nation  mustered  over 
thirteen  hundred  thousand  strong.  We  did  this  under 
the  single  impulse  of  resistance  to  a  common  danger, 
with  every  external  circumstance  against  us.  Of  strange, 
discordant,  and  even  hostile  elements,  we  gathered  from 
the  four  winds,  and  formed  and  fought  the  battle 
through,  under  the  constant  hot  fire  of  a  disciplined, 
proud,  and  pampered  enemy.  Did  we  brave  all  then  to 
falter  now,  —  now,  when  that  same  enemy  is  wavering, 
dissevered,  and  belligerent  ?  The  result  is  not  doubtful. 
We  shall  not  fail  —  if  we  stand  firm,  we  shall  not  fail. 
Wise  counsels  may  accelerate,  or  mistakes  delay  it,  but| 
sooner  or  later,  the  victory  is  sure  to  come." 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  DEBATES  WITH  DOUGLAS 

THE  term  of  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  as  United  States 
Senator,  was  about  to  expire  in  1858.  He  returned 
to  Illinois  in  the  summer  of  that  year  to  find  the 
people  aroused  over  the  slavery  question  as  they  never 
had  been  before,  and  the  new  Republican  party  under 
Lincoln's  leadership  eager  to  do  battle. 

The  two  men  had  been  rivals  for  twenty  years.  It 
was  while  Lincoln  was  serving  his  first  term  in  the 
legislature  that  Douglas,  a  young  man  of  twenty-one, 
had  come  from  Vermont  to  Illinois.  He  was  as  poor  as 
Lincoln  had  been  four  years  before,  when  at  the  same 
age  he  drove  his  father's  ox-team  across  the  prairie. 
But  Lincoln  remained  poor  and  obscure,  while  Douglas 
rose  at  once  to  prominence.  At  twenty-two  Douglas 
was  State's  attorney,  and  in  six  years  more  he  had 
been  legislator,  register  of  the  land-office,  secretary  of 
state,  and  judge  of  the  supreme  court.  At  thirty-three 
he  had  served  two  terms  in  Congress  and  was  made 
United  States  Senator.  He  was  reflected  Senator  in 
1852,  and  now,  in  1858,  he  was  asking  the  people  of 
Illinois  to  elect  him  again.  He  had  been  twice  a  promi 
nent  candidate  for  President,  and  he  was  now  the  most 
conspicuous  man  in  public  life  in  the  United  States. 
In  the  legislature  of  the  State  and  in  Congress,  in  court 
and  on  the  stump,  he  and  Lincoln  had  been  constantly 
in  each  other's  way.  Even  in  the  social  life  of  Spring- 
field  and  in  seeking  the  good  graces  of  Mary  Todd,  he 
had  been  Lincoln's  rival. 


60  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

The  two  men  were  most  unlike,  in  looks,  in  manner 
of  speech,  in  social  condition,  and  in  temperament.  It 
was  a  strange  rivalry.  Lincoln  was  a  physical  giant, 
lank  and  bony  in  figure,  yellow  in  face,  with  high  cheek« 
bones,  a  long  neck,  a  heavy  jaw,  and  a  large  mouth 
with  deep  lines  drawn  about  it.  With  his  hollow  cheeks 
and  his  look  of  hopeless  melancholy,  when  his  face  was 
in  repose,  his  gray  eyes  deep  set  beneath  bushy  eye 
brows  and  giving  out  no  expression,  except  when  he 
was  aroused  from  his  habit  of  absent-minded  contem 
plation,  he  was  at  times  a  figure  at  once  fascinating 
and  unapproachable.  When  he  was  awakened  from 
his  far-away  mood,  his  eyes  flashed  and  his  face  lighted 
up  with  a  smile  whose  sweetness  and  charm  were  irre 
sistible. 

His  voice  was  a  high,  clear  tenor  which,  in  his  occa 
sional  moments  of  passionate  excitement,  became  thin 
and  shrill.  He  wore  shabby  clothes,  probably  because 
he  could  not  afford  anything  better,  but  he  cared  little 
for  appearances.  His  mind  was  absorbed  with  serious 
things. 

Douglas  was  a  little  over  five  feet  in  height,  and 
thickset,  with  a  lion-like  head  crowned  with  a  luxuri 
ance  of  soft  brown  hair.  His  voice  has  been  compared 
with  the  rich  bass  tones  of  a  cathedral  organ,  thrilling 
men's  bodies  as  well  as  their  souls.  He  dressed  with 
scrupulous  neatness,  and  carried  himself  with  the  grace 
and  some  of  the  imperious  air  of  a  prince  of  the  blood 
royal.  His  life  had  been  one  continuous  series  of  suc 
cesses.  Everything  he  wanted  had  come  to  him,  as  if 
by  right,  until  he  considered  himself  a  child  of  fortune; 
while  Lincoln  had  learned  by  bitter  experience  all  the 
lessons  that  disappointment  and  sorrow  have  to  teach. 
In  this  struggle  for  the  senatorship,  Douglas  was  to 


THE   DEBATES  WITH  DOUGLAS  61 

have  one  more  victory  and  Lincoln  another  disap 
pointment. 

In  one  of  his  speeches,  Lincoln  paid  this  tribute  to  his 
adversary  :  "  Twenty-two  years  ago,"  he  said,  "  Judge 
Douglas  and  I  became  acquainted.  We  were  both 
young  then,  he  a  trifle  younger  than  I  (four  years). 
Even  then  we  were  both  ambitious  —  I  perhaps  quite 
as  much  as  he.  With  me  the  race  of  ambition  has  been 
a  failure  —  a  flat  failure.  With  him  it  has  been  one  of 
splendid  success.  His  name  fills  the  nation  and  is  not 
unknown  in  foreign  lands.  I  affect  no  contempt  for  the 
high  eminence  he  has  reached.  I  would  rather  stand 
upon  that  eminence  than  wear  the  richest  crown  that 
ever  decked  a  monarch's  brow.  The  judge  means  to 
keep  me  down  —  not  put  me  down,  for  I  have  never 
been  up."  In  this  tribute  Lincoln  showed  in  his  own 
nature  a  modesty  for  which  the  world  has  always  loved 
him. 

Having  made  up  his  mind  that  the  slavery  question 
must  be  brought  home  to  every  voter,  and  that  Doug 
las's  position,  of  not  caring  whether  slavery  was  ex 
tended  into  the  Territories  or  not,  was  wrong,  Lincoln 
challenged  Douglas  to  a  public  discussion  of  theljaes- 
tion.  He  believed  that  a  series  of  debates  in  which  he 
and  Douglas  should  speak  from  the  same  platform  to 
the  same  people  wrould  give  him  an  opportunity  to  reach 
many  of  the  Democrats  who  would  not  come  to  Repub 
lican  meetings,  and  would  keep  the  people  alive  to  the 
seriousness  of  the  situation.  Douglas  accepted  the  chal 
lenge.  The  debates  were  arranged  so  that  one  should 
occur  at  each  of  seven  different  places.  Each  debate 
was  to  last  for  three  hours,  the  time  being  divided 
equally  between  the  two  speakers.  The  places  chosen 
were  Ottawa,  Freeport,  Jonesboro,  Charleston,  Gales- 


62  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

burg,  Quincy,  and  Alton.  These  were  small  country 
towns  widely  scattered  over  the  State. 

Hither  flocked  the  friends  of  each  speaker,  each 
jrowd  wild  with  enthusiasm  for  its  own  candidate. 
Men  came  from  other  States,  and  reporters  from  Chi 
cago,  New  York,  and  other  cities,  traveled  with  the 
speakers,  the  Chicago  reporters  sending  to  their  papers 
every  word  that  was  spoken,  so  that  straightway  the 
world  was  reading  the  speeches  and  discussing  every 
where  the  right  and  wrong  of  slavery  and  the  argu 
ments  for  and  against  popular  sovereignty  which 
Douglas  and  Lincoln  were  making. 

The  two  men  were  equally  matched.  Each  had  had 
a  lifelong  training  in  public  speaking  and  each  was 
perfectly  at  home  on  the  platform,  quick  to  take  ad 
vantage  in  the  discussion,  and  ready  to  meet  any  at 
tack,  however  savage.  It  was  a  battle  of  the  giarts. 
.Each  was  admired  and  loved  by  his  own  supporters 
and  admired  and  feared  by  the  supporters  of  the  other. 
And  each,  firmly  convinced  that  he  was  right,  had  the 
confidence  in  his  own  cause  which  a  conviction  of  the 
right  always  gives.  Both  were  terribly  in  earnest. 

Lincoln  commenced  his  speech  accepting  the  nomi 
nation  to  the  senatorship  with  a  prophecy  about  slav 
ery  which  he  believed  might  not  come  true  for  "a 
hundred  years  at  least,"  but  which  was  actually  ful 
filled  seven  years  later,  when,  as  a  result  of  the  Civil 
War,  the  slaves  were  set  free  throughout  the  United 
States.  He  said :  " i  A  house  divided  against  itself 
cannot  stand.'  I  believe  this  government  cannot  endure 
permanently  half  slave  and  half  free.  I  do  not  expect 
the  Union  to  be  dissolved  —  I  do  not  expect  the  house 
to  fall  —  but  I  do  expect  it  will  cease  to  be  divided. 
It  will  become  all  one  thing,  or  all  the  other.  Either 


THE  DEBATES  WITH  DOUGLAS  63 

the  opponents  of  slavery  will  arrest  the  further  spread 
of  it,  and  place  it  where  the  public  mind  shall  rest  in 
the  belief  that  it  is  in  the  course  of  ultimate  extinc* 
tion  ;  or  its  advocates  will  push  it  forward  till  it  shal? 
become  alike  lawful  in  all  the  States,  old  as  well  as 
new,  North  as  well  as  South." 

This  was  a  statement  of  what  he  believed  to  be  true, 
but  Douglas  insisted  that  it  expressed  Lincoln's  wish 
rather  than  his  belief.  In  Douglas's  mind  it  meant 
that  Lincoln  would  destroy  the  Union  unless  he  could 
drive  slavery  out  of  all  the  States.  "  Mr.  Lincoln  goes 
for  a  war  of  the  sections,"  Douglas  argued,  "  until  one 
or  the  other  shall  be  subdued.  I  go  for  the  great 
principle  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill,  the  right  of 
the  people  to  decide  for  themselves."  But  Lincoln  re 
sponded  that  when  Douglas  denied  the  truth  that  "  a 
house  divided  against  itself  cannot  stand,"  he  was  dis 
puting  a  much  higher  authority  than  Abraham  Lincoln. 

It  was  during  the  debate  at  Charleston  that  Lincoln 
found  an  opportunity  to  make  use  of  the  knowledge  of 
geometry  which  he  had  picked  up  as  he  rode  the  cir 
cuit  not  many  years  before.  Judge  Douglas  had  an 
swered  some  direct  charges  relating  to  his  public  acts 
that  had  been  made  by  Senator  Trumbull  by  calling 
Senator  Trumbull  a  liar.  Douglas  was  greatly  excited 
throughout  this  particular  debate,  and  Lincoln's  attacks 
had  not  been  soothing.  "  If  you  have  ever  studied 
geometry,"  Lincoln  argued,  "  you  remember  that  by  a 
course  of  reasoning  Euclid  proves  that  all  the  angles 
in  a  triangle  are  equal  to  two  right  angles.  Euclid  has 
shown  you  how  to  work  it  out.  Now,  if  you  undertake 
to  disprove  that  proposition,  and  to  show  that  it  is 
erroneous,  would  you  prove  it  to  be  false  by  calling 
Euclid  a  liar?" 


M  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

As  the  debates  proceeded,  the  public  interest  grew 
to  a  feverish  state  of  excitement.  The  audience  in 
some  places  numbered  twenty  thousand,  the  men  and 
women  and  children  coming  into  the  town  on  horse 
back,  in  wagons,  and  on  foot,  with  brass  bands  arid 
with  fife  and  drum,  and  crowding  the  dusty  highways 
for  fifteen  or  twenty  miles  in  every  direction.  As  they 
neared  the  town,  processions  were  formed  with  ban 
ners  and  transparencies  on  which  some  political  senti 
ment  was  printed,  such  as,  "  The  government  was  made 
for  white  men — Douglas  for  life";  or  "Old  Abe 
the  Giant-Killer  and  Rail-Splitter."  A  common  feature 
of  the  parade  was  a  group  of  pretty  girls  in  white  on 
horseback  representing  the  States  of  the  Union,  while 
a  sad-looking  girl  in  black  rode  alone  bearing  a  banner 
that  proclaimed  her  to  the  world,  "  Kansas  —  I  will 
be  free."  The  Democratic  procession  had  to  follow  a 
different  road  from  that  taken  by  the  Republicans  to 
avoid  the  danger  of  a  riot. 

When  the  speaking  began,  the  shouting  and  the 
tumult  ceased  and  men  listened  breathless  to  the  man 
they  loved  or  feared,  feeling  that  on  the  words  they 
heard  the  fate  of  the  nation  rested.  Sometimes  one  or 
the  other  debater  caught  the  infection  of  the  popular 
excitement  and  sprang  to  his  feet  to  deny  his  oppo 
nent's  statements,  but  was  pulled  back  into  his  seat 
with  the  reminder  that  silence  would  be  wise. 

When  Lincoln  arose  to  speak,  he  showed  at  first 
some  timidity  as  he  stood  at  full  height  towering  above 
his  rival,  so  that  as  he  began  to  answer  the  elegant 
Douglas,  even  his  friends,  for  the  moment,  felt  sorry 
for  him.  He  planted  himself  squarely  on  his  feet,  with 
his  hands  clasped  behind  him,  and  stood  almost  motion 
less,  talking  in  an  awkward,  friendly  fashion  to  men 


THE  DEBATES  WITH   DOUGLAS  65 

whom  he  treated  like  old  acquaintances.  As  he  warmed 
to  his  subject,  he  would  soon  forget  himself.  He  had  a 
fashion  of  standing  still,  while  he  spoke  in  his  deliber 
ate,  familiar  way,  until  he  came  to  some  climax  where 
he  thought  he  had  made  a  point  on  Senator  Douglas, 
when  he  would  swing  his  long  right  arm  with  his  long 
bony  forefinger  in  an  abrupt  circle  as  if  drawing  a  line 
in  the  air  about  the  point  he  had  just  made,  and  there 
would  come  over  his  face  a  smile  of  assured  good  will, 
as  if  to  say  in  confidence  to  an  audience  of  old  friends, 
"Did  n't  I  get  the  Little  Giant  that  time?"  This  char 
acteristic  trick  of  speech  and  the  warmth  of  the  smile 
that  went  with  it  seldom  failed  to  win  the  sympathy 
of  any  wavering  voter  into  whose  eager  face  he  looked. 

A  boy  who  heard  the  debates  recalls  that  "while  I 
had  thought  Lincoln  the  homeliest  man  I  ever  saw,  he 
was  the  handsomest  man  I  ever  listened  to  in  a  speech. 
Lincoln,  in  action,  no  one  has  ever  been  able  to  de 
scribe.  He  was  simply  grandeur  itself." 

One  of  the  reporters  who  later  became  a  journalist 
of  note  has  described  his  unique  way  of  speaking: 
"The  impression  made  upon  me  by  the  orator  was 
quite  overpowering.  I  have  never  heard  anything  since 
that  I  would  put  on  a  higher  plane  of  oratory.  All  the 
strings  that  play  upon  the  human  heart  and  under 
standing  were  touched  with  masterly  skill  and  force, 
while  beyond  and  above  all  skill  was  the  overwhelming 
conviction  pressed  upon  the  audience  that  the  speaker 
was  charged  with  an  irresistible  and  inspiring  duty  td 
his  fellow  men.  Although  I  heard  him  many  times 
afterward,  I  shall  longest  remember  him  as  I  then  saw 
the  tall,  angular  form  with  the  long,  angular  arms,  at 
times  bent  nearly  double  with  excitement,  like  a  large 
flail  animating  two  smaller  ones,  the  mobile  face  wet 


66  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

with  perspiration  which  he  discharged  in  drops  as  he 
threw  his  head  this  way  and  that  like  a  projectile  — 
not  a  graceful  figure,  yet  not  an  ungraceful  one.  After 
listening  to  him  a  few  minutes,  nobody  would  rnind 
whether  he  was  graceful  or  not.  All  thought  of  grace 
or  form  would  be  lost  in  the  exceeding  attractiveness 
of  what  he  was  saying." 

The  debates  started  all  America  to  thinking.  The 
slavery  question  was  no  longer  only  a  question  of  poli 
tics  ;  it  had  come  to  be  a  question  of  good  and  evil. 
And  the  man  who  had  presented  unanswerably  the 
cause  of  liberty  had  become  a  national  figure,  to  whom 
all  who  would  restrain  the  slave  power  were  beginning 
to  turn  for  leadership. 

Lincoln  summed  up  the  whole  controversy  in  these 
words,  which  left  nothing  more  to  be  said :  "  That  is 
the  real  issue.  That  is  the  issue  that  will  continue 
in  this  country  when  these  poor  tongues  of  Judge 
Douglas  and  myself  shall  be  silent.  It  is  the  eternal 
struggle  between  these  two  principles,  right  and  wrong, 
throughout  the  world." 

Douglas  won  the  senatorship,  but  his  advocacy  of 
popular  sovereignty  had  driven  President  Buchanan 
and  the  Southern  leaders  into  active  hostility  to  him 
and  to  all  that  he  had  argued  for,  and  split  the  Demo 
cratic  party  in  two,  the  Northern  Democrats  being  for 
him  and  the  Southern  Democrats  bitterly  opposed  to 
him.  Lincoln  lost  the  senatorship,  but  he  had  gained 
the  whole  North  for  an  audience,  and  had  given  the 
Republican  party  courage  for  the  national  struggle 
that  was  soon  to  come.  He  himself  was  no  longer  an 
obscure  country  lawyer.  The  world  was  beginning  to 
listen  to  him  and  to  watch  with  eagerness  for  what 
ever  he  might  have  to  say. 


THE  DEBATES   WITH   DOUGLAS  67 

He  was  disappointed  at  his  defeat,  but  he  felt  that 
the  fight  had  not  been  in  vain,  for  it  had  awakened 
the  enemies  of  slavery  to  the  real  danger  that  confronted 
them.  He  wrote  to  a  friend :  "  I  am  glad  I  made  the 
late  race.  It  gave  me  a  hearing  on  the  great  and  durable 
question  of  the  age,  which  I  could  have  had  in  no  other 
way ;  and  though  I  now  sink  out  of  view,  and  shall  be 
forgotten,  I  believe  I  have  made  some  marks  which 
will  tell  for  the  cause  of  civil  liberty  long  after  I  am 
gone." 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE    NOMINATION 

THE  campaign  for  the  senatorship  had  left  Lincoln 
poorer  than  ever ;  it  had  kept  him  from  earning  any 
thing  at  the  law,  and  it  had  burdened  him  with  heavy 
expense.  Douglas  had  gone  about  in  private  cars  and 
special  trains,  while  Lincoln  had  only  such  accommoda 
tion  as  he  had  the  money  to  pay  for,  sometimes  a  horse, 
sometimes  a  crowded  railway  coach,  sometimes  the 
caboose  of  a  leisurely  freight  train.  When  he  made  his 
contribution  to  the  campaign  fund,  it  was  with  the  con- 
fession  that  he  was  "  absolutely  without  money  now, 
even  for  household  purposes."  He  went  back  reluc 
tantly  to  the  law,  for  he  felt  that  his  country  needed 
his  services  now  more  than  ever  before.  To  a  friend 
he  wrote,  "  The  fight  must  go  on.  The  cause  of  civil 
liberty  must  not  be  surrendered  at  the  end  of  one, 
or  even  one  hundred  defeats."  He  earned  a  little  by 
delivering  a  few  lectures,  and  he  got  back  for  a  few 
months  into  a  fairly  active  law  practice.  But  it  was 
only  for  a  few  months.  To  him  came  appeals  from  al] 
parts  of  the  country  to  help  in  the  fight  against  slavery. 
He  declined  an  invitation  to  speak  in  Boston  in  ApriL, 
1859,  because  he  could  not  leave  his  work;  but  in  the 
fall,  he  spoke  in  Kansas  and  Wisconsin,  and  followed 
Douglas  into  Ohio,  speaking  in  the  same  places  and 
answering  the  Little  Giant's  arguments  much  as  he 
had  done  in  Illinois  the  year  before. 

Lincoln's  speeches  had  been  printed  and  read  all  over 
the  country.  Republicans  here  and  there  were  begin* 


THE  NOMINATION  69 

ning  to  say  to  one  another,  "  If  Douglas  is  to  be  the 
Democratic  candidate  for  the  presidency,  what  better 
choice  could  there  be  for  his  antagonist  than  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  ?  "  When  an  occasional  suggestion  of  this 
sort  reached  him,  Lincoln  was  entirely  sincere  in  his 
answer,  "  I  must  say  I  do  not  think  myself  fit  for  the 
presidency  "  ;  or,  as  he  wrote  to  a  Western  judge,  "  It 
seems  as  if  they  ought  to  find  somebody  who  knows 
more  than  I  do." 

Early  in  1860,  he  was  invited  to  New  York  to  lec 
ture  at  Cooper  Institute.  The  audience  which  was  to 
hear  him  was  made  up  of  some  of  the  most  cultivated 
people  in  the  United  States.  David  Dudley  Field  and 
Horace  Greeley  were  on  the  committee.  William  Cullen 
Bryant  was  to  preside.  The  idea  that  he,  the  self-taught, 
modest  country  lawyer  could  possibly  bring  anything 
to  this  educated  company  of  Eastern  people  that  they 
would  care  to  hear,  seemed  strange  to  him,  and  he  hesi 
tated  to  accept  the  invitation. 

It  is  interesting  to  know  how  the  orator  from  the 
prairies  impressed  one  of  that  audience  who  has  given 
us  his  recollections  of  the  speech.  "  It  is  now  forty 
years,"  said  Mr.  Joseph  H.  Choate,  "since  I  first  saw 
and  heard  Abraham  Lincoln,  but  the  impression  which 
he  left  on  my  mind  is  ineffaceable.  .  .  .  He  appeared 
in  every  sense  of  the  word  like  one  of  the  plain  people 
among  whom  he  loved  to  be  counted.  At  first  sight 
there  was  nothing  impressive  or  imposing  about  him  — 
except  that  his  great  stature  singled  him  out  from  the 
crowd  ;  his  clothes  hung  awkwardly  on  his  giant  frame, 
his  face  was  of  a  dark  pallor  without  the  slightest  tinge 
of  color ;  his  seamed  and  rugged  features  bore  the  fur 
rows  of  hardship  and  struggle  ;  his  deepset  eyes  looked 
sad  and  anxious ;  his  countenance  in  repose  gave  little 


70  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

evidence  of  that  brain-power  which  had  raised  him  from 
the  lowest  to  the  highest  station  among  his  countrymen  ; 
as  he  talked  to  me  before  the  meeting,  he  seemed  ill  at 
ease,  with  that  sort  of  apprehension  which  a  young  man 
might  feel  before  presenting  himself  to  a  new  and 
strange  audience,  whose  critical  disposition  he  dreaded. 
*  .  .  When  he  spoke  he  was  transformed ;  his  eye  kin 
dled,  his  voice  rang,  his  face  shone  and  seemed  to  light 
up  the  whole  assembly.  For  an  hour  and  a  half  he  held 
his  audience  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand." 

Lincoln  chose  for  a  text  Senator  Douglas's  proposition 
that  the  men  who  had  created  the  nation  and  framed 
its  Constitution  "  had  understood  the  slavery  question 
just  as  well  and  even  better  than  we  do  now,"  and 
proceeded  to  show  that  they  had  seen  the  evils  of  slavery, 
and  planned  the  government  so  as  to  keep  slavery  out 
of  the  Territories  and  put  it  in  the  way  of  ultimate 
extinction.  He  went  on  :  "  As  those  fathers  marked  it, 
so  let  it  be  again  marked,  as  an  evil  not  to  be  extended, 
but  to  be  tolerated  and  protected  only  because  of  and 
so  far  as  its  actual  presence  among  us  makes  that  tol 
eration  and  protection  a  necessity."  This  was  as  far 
as  Lincoln's  party  had  yet  gone  in  its  opposition  to 
slavery,  —  that  it  was" an  evil  not  to  be  extended." 
The  difference  between  South  and  North,  as  he  explained 
it,  was  a  difference  as  to  whether  slavery  was  right,  as 
the  South  believed,  or  wrong,  as  the  North  believed. 

"  Wrong  as  we  think  slavery  is,"  Lincoln  said  in 
the  conclusion  of  his  speech,  "we  can  yet  afford  to  let 
it  alone  where  it  is,  because  that  much  is  due  to  the 
necessity  arising  from  its  actual  presence  in  the  nation  ; 
but  can  we,  while  our  votes  will  prevent  it,  allow  it  to 
spread  into  the  national  Territories,  and  to  overrun  us 
here  in  these  free  States  ?  If  our  sense  of  duty  forbids 


THE  NOMINATION  77 

this,  then  let  us  stand  by  our  duty  fearlessly  and 
effectively.  .  .  .  Neither  let  us  be  slandered  from  our 
duty  by  false  accusations  against  us,  nor  frightened 
from  it  by  menaces  of  destruction  to  the  government, 
nor  of  dungeons  to  ourselves.  Let  us  have  faith  that 
right  makes  might,  and  in  that  faith  let  us  to  the  end 
dare  to  do  our  duty  as  we  understand  it." 

From  New  York  he  went  into  New  England,  where 
he  followed  the  same  line  of  argument,  insisting  that 
under  the  Declaration  of  Independence  the  negro  was 
entitled  to  an  equal  right  with  the  white  man  in  the 
enjoyment  of  life,  liberty,  and  happiness.  "  One  of  the 
reasons  why  I  am  opposed  to  slavery  is  just  here,"  he 
argued.  "  When  one  starts  poor,  as  most  do  in  the  race 
of  life,  free  society  is  such  that  he  knows  he  can  bet 
ter  his  condition  ;  he  knows  that  there  is  no  fixed  con 
dition  of  labor  for  his  whole  life.  I  am  not  ashamed 
to  confess  that  twenty-five  years  ago  I  was  a  hired 
laborer,  mauling  rails,  at  work  on  a  flatboat — just  what 
might  happen  to  any  poor  man's  son.  I  want  every 
man  to  have  a  chance  —  and  I  believe  a  black  man  is 
entitled  to  it  —  in  which  he  can  better  his  condition 
—  when  he  may  look  forward  and  hope  to  be  a  hired 
laborer  this  year  and  the  next,  work  for  himself  after 
ward,  and  finally  to  hire  men  to  work  for  him.  That  is 
the  true  system." 

At  New  Haven  he  made  his  hearers  think  of  slavery 
as  a  serpent.  He  said :  "  If  I  saw  a  venomous  snake 

;  crawling  in  the  road,  any  man  would  say  I  might  seize 
the  nearest  stick  and  kill  it ;  but  if  I  found  that  snake 

;  in  bed  with  my  children,  that  would  be  another  ques 
tion.  I  might  hurt  the  children  more  than  the  snake, 
and  it  might  bite  them.  Much  more,  if  I  found  it  in 
bed  with  my  neighbor's  children,  and  I  had  bound 


n  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

myself  by  a  solemn  compact  not  to  meddle  with  his 
children  under  any  circumstances,  it  would  become  me 
to  let  that  particular  mode  of  getting  rid  of  the  gen 
tleman  alone.  But  if  there  was  a  bed  newly  made  up, 
to  which  the  children  were  to  be  taken,  and  it  was  pro 
posed  to  take  a  batch  of  young  snakes  and  put  them 
there  with  them,  I  take  it  no  man  would  say  there  was 
any  question  how  I  ought  to  decide.  That  is  just  the 
case.  The  new  Territories  are  the  newly  made  bed  to 
which  our  children  are  to  go,  and  it  lies  with  the  nation 
to  say  whether  they  shall  have  snakes  mixed  up  with 
them  or  not.  It  does  not  seem  as  if  there  could  be  much 
hesitation  what  our  policy  should  be." 

The  representation  of  slavery  as  a  deadly  snake 
turned  loose  among  innocent  children  was  not  a  pleas 
ant  illustration,  but  it  captured  the  attention  of  men 
and  stuck  in  their  memory.  So,  when  at  Hartford, 
Connecticut,  he  followed  it  by  comparing  slavery  to  a 
wen  he  had  once  seen  on  an  old  gentleman's  neck,  he 
appealed  to  the  imagination  and  made  it  impossible  to 
think  of  slavery  without  something  of  a  sense  of  hor 
ror.  "Everybody  would  say  the  wen  was  a  great  evil, 
and  would  cause  the  man's  death  after  a  while;  but 
you  could  n't  cut  it  out,  for  he  'd  bleed  to  death  in  a 
minute.  But  would  you  ingraft  the  seeds  of  that  wen 
on  the  necks  of  sound  and  healthy  men  ?  He  must 
endure  and  be  patient,  hoping  for  possible  relief.  The 
wen  represents  slavery  on  the  neck  of  this  country. 
This  only  applies  to  those  who  think  slavery  is  wrong. 
Those  who  think  it  right  would  consider  the  snake  a 
jewel  and  the  wen  an  ornament." 

Before  he  had  spoken  in  the  East,  Lincoln's  fame 
as  a  successful  jury  lawyer  and  a  teller  of  stories  had 
preceded  him.  The  Cooper  Institute  speech  revealed 


THE  NOMINATION  73 

an  entirely  different  sort  of  man.  He  gave  his  audi 
ence  no  jokes  and  he  told  them  no  stories.  He  did 
not  even  talk  politics.  The  message  he  brought  had  to 
do  with  national  morality  —  with  the  eternal  question 
of  good  and  evil.  They  had  looked  for  an  "  ^Esop  of 
the  prairies,"  and  Lincoln  had  come  to  them  a  prophet, 
like  Isaiah  or  John  the  Baptist,  calling  a  nation  to 
repentance.  In  that  time  that  tried  men's  souls,  when 
the  South,  determined  to  impose  slavery  on  the  whole 
country,  was  threatening  to  break  up  the  Union  and 
destroy  the  national  government,  the  men  of  the  East 
began  to  see  in  Lincoln's  patience  and  wisdom  quali 
ties  that  other  leaders  did  not  have.  It  seemed  to 
them  that  Lincoln  saw  all  sides  of  the  great  question, 
and  that  he  alone  discussed  it  wisely  and  without  bit 
terness.  When  he  returned  to  Illinois,  his  name  was 
in  everybody's  mouth.  In  the  man  who,  against  such 
odds,  had  proved  himself  the  equal  of  Douglas  in  de 
bate  and  had  forced  Douglas  to  split  the  Democratic 
party  in  two  and  who  was  now  winning  the  confidence 
of  the  East,  Illinois  saw  the  strongest  possible  candi 
date  for  the  presidency.  The  newspapers  over  the 
State  began  to  urge  his  nomination,  while  the  politi 
cians,  most  of  whom  had  practiced  law  on  the  circuit 
with  him  and  knew  him  well,  became  missionaries  in 
his  behalf,  visiting  Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  Indiana,  and 
the  States  farther  west  and  interesting  the  Kepubli' 
can  workers  in  his  candidacy  before  the  convention 
which  was  about  to  be  held  in  Chicago  in  May,  1860. 
Meanwhile  the  Democrats  were  at  war  among  them« 
selves.  They  had  been  hopelessly  divided  ever  since 
Douglas  in  his  debates  with  Lincoln  had  disappointed 
the  South  by  refusing  to  give  up  popular  sover 
eignty,  and  become  a  straight-out  slavery  man.  The 


74  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Democratic  National  Convention  met  in  April  at 
Charleston,  South  Carolina.  Over  half  the  delegates 
were  for  Douglas,  but  it  required  a  two-thirds  vote  to 
make  a  nomination.  They  adopted  a  platform  in  favor 
of  popular  sovereignty  over  the  protest  of  the  South 
ern  delegates,  who  wanted  the  party  to  declare  for 
universal  slavery.  "  We  want  nothing  more,"  the 
slavery  delegates  said,  "  than  a  simple  declaration  that 
negro  slaves  are  property,  and  we  want  the  recogni 
tion  of  the  obligation  of  the  federal  government  to 
protect  that  property  like  all  other."  To  this  the  Doug 
las  delegates  refused  to  agree.  Delegates  from  twelve 
of  the  slave  States  left  the  convention  and  later  nomi 
nated  John  C.  Breckenridge  for  President.  What  was 
left  of  the  convention  adjourned  until  June,  and  then 
nominated  Stephen  A.  Douglas.  From  this  time  until 
the  election,  the  Democratic  party  remained  divided, 
the  Southern  Democrats  supporting  Breckenridge  and 
most  of  the  Northern  Democrats  remaining  loyal  to 
Douglas. 

The  week  before  the  Republican  National  Conven 
tion  at  Chicago,  the  Illinois  Republicans  held  their  State 
convention  at  Decatur.  Lincoln  was  sitting  on  the 
platform  when  a  delegate  announced  that  an  old  De 
mocrat  of  Macon  County  wanted  to  make  a  contribu 
tion.  Just  at  this  moment  John  Hanks  came  into  the 
hall  bearing  two  old-time  fence-rails  decorated  with 
flags  and  a  streamer,  on  which  was  printed :  — 

"ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

The  Rail  Candidate  for 

President  in  1860. 

Two  rails  from  a  lot  of  three  thousand  made  in  1830  by 
John  Hanks  and  Abe  Lincoln/' 


THE  NOMINATION  75 

It  was  an  exciting  moment.  To  the  convention  the 
rails  meant  that,  under  Abraham  Lincoln's  leadership, 
the  struggle  they  were  just  entering  would  be  between 
the  plain  people  of  the  Lincoln  type  and  a  powerful 
slave  aristocracy  who  had  no  sympathy  for  labor.  The 
convention  went  wild.  Lincoln  stood  awkwardly,  almost 
bashfully,  smiling  at  the  enthusiasm  of  his  friends 
while  he  waited  for  quiet  to  say :  "  Gentlemen,  I  sup 
pose  you  want  to  know  something  about  those  things," 
pointing  to  the  rails.  "  I  don't  know  whether  we  made 
those  rails  or  not;  the  fact  is,  I  don't  think  they  are 
a  credit  to  the  makers"  (laughing  as  he  spoke).  uBut 
I  do  know  this.  I  made  rails  then,  and  I  think  I  could 
make  better  ones  than  those  now." 

The  Chicago  Convention  met  on  May  16.  Among 
its  delegates  were  the  greatest  orators  and  statesmen 
of  the  day.  They  were  seeking  a  candidate  whom  men 
of  all  shades  of  opinion  could  support,  from  the  aboli 
tionists  demanding  Seward's  nomination,  to  the  men 
of  the  border  States,  who,  although  favoring  slavery, 
were  loyal  to  the  Union.  The  candidate  of  whose 
nomination  the  Eastern  delegates  were  confident  was 
William  H.  Seward  of  New  York,  who  had  been  the 
governor  of  New  York  and  the  Republican  leader  in 
the  United  States  Senate.  But  Seward's  hatred  of 
slavery  had  led  him  to  go  much  farther  than  Lincoln 
had  ever  gone  and  to  speak  of  a  law  that  was  higher 
than  the  Constitution  and  the  Supreme  Court.  Besides 
this  it  was  feared  that  his  extreme  opinions  on  other 
political  questions  might  make  it  harder  to  elect  him 
than  it  would  be  to  elect  a  more  moderate  man.  People 
who  admired  Seward  as  a  brilliant  leader  still  feared 
that  he  could  not  carry  the  Northern  vote  as  against 
Douglas.  So  it  came  about  that  Lincoln  was  chosen. 


76  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

While  the  balloting  was  going  on,  Lincoln  was  wait 
ing  for  the  news  at  Springfield,  tossing  ball  and  try 
ing  hard  to  restrain  his  excitement.  When  at  last  the 
message  came  that  he  was  nominated,  he  was  sitting  in 
a  newspaper  office.  He  looked  long  at  the  message, 
folded.it  and  put  it  into  his  vest-pocket  as  he  remarked 
quietly,  "  There 's  a  little  short  woman  down  at  our 
house  who  would  like  to  hear  this.  I  '11  go  down  and 
tell  her." 


Copyright,  1881,  George  B.  Ayres,  Philadelphia 
LINCOLN  IN  I860 

(From  an  original  negative  taken  at  Lincoln's  home  in  Springfield,  soon  after  his  nomina 
tion.  When  he  saw  the  proof  Lincoln  remarked,  "  Well,  that  expresses  me  better  than 
anv  I  have  sean") 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE   ELECTION 

THROUGH  the  long,  anxious  summer  and  fall  of 
1860,  Lincoln  stayed  at  home  in  Springfield.  In  a  room 
at  the  State  House  he  made  welcome  the  multitude  of 
visitors  who  came  to  see  him,  meeting  in  the  same  easy, 
friendly  fashion,  the  dignified  statesman  from  far  away 
and  the  old  lady  from  New  Salem  who  had  brought  a 
pair  of  woolen  socks  of  her  own  knitting  for  "  Old  Abe  " 
to  wear  when  he  became  President  of  the  United  States. 
It  took  no  card  of  admission  to  get  into  Lincoln's  pre 
sence.  Daily,  men  crowded  into  the  room  to  learn  the 
news  of  the  campaign  and  to  laugh  with  Lincoln  at  his 
own  inimitable  stories. 

The  fact  that  men  spoke  familiarly  of  him  as  "  Old 
Abe  the  Rail-Splitter  "  made  many  Eastern  Republicans 
uneasy  lest  he  prove  unfit  for  the  fearful  responsibility 
that  would  come  to  the  new  President.  But  when  they 
had  talked  with  him  at  Springfield,  their  eyes  were 
opened  and  they  knew  him.  They  found  him  wise  and 
strong  and  calm  ;  and  as  the  months  passed,  something 
in  his  spirit  took  hold  upon  them  as  it  has  upon  the 
world  in  these  later  years,  and  awoke  in  them  a  ten- 
ierness  of  affection  for  this  man  who  had  made  his 
ivay  through  poverty  and  sorrow  to  the  leadership  of 
a  great  people. 

There  were  three  other  candidates  for  the  presi 
dency,  each  supported  by  a  strong  political  party  arid 
each  advocating  different  principles  of  government. 
The  Northern  Democrats,  believers  in  popular  sover- 


78  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

eignty,  and  caring  little  about  slavery,  were  for  Ste 
phen  A.  Douglas.  The  Southern  Democrats,  believing 
firmly  in  the  righteousness  of  slavery  and  demanding 
that  Congress  protect  slave  property  in  the  Territories, 
supported  Breckenridge  of  Kentucky.  The  men  who 
were  afraid  lest  the  agitation  of  the  slavery  question  by 
either  its  friends  or  its  enemies  would  bring  ruin  to  the 
country  organized  the  Constitutional  Union  party  and 
nominated  John  Bell  of  Tennessee,  on  a  campaign 
platform  which  "recognized  no  political  principle 
other  than  the  Constitution  of  the  country,  the  Union 
of  the  States,  and  the  enforcement  of  the  laws." 

Those  who  opposed  slavery  in  the  Territories  were 
all  within  the  Republican  party,  and,  as  the  cam 
paign  went  on  and  they  came  to  know  Lincoln  better, 
worked  tirelessly  and  almost  passionately  for  his  elec 
tion.  Those  who  either  favored  slavery  or  did  not  care 
whether  it  won  or  lost  made  up  more  than  half  of  all 
the  voters  in  the  United  States,  but  their  vbtes  were 
divided  among  Douglas  and  Breckenridge  and  Bell. 
Before  November  came,  it  was  plain  that  the  Republi 
cans  would  profit  by  the  divisions  among  the  other 
three  parties  and  would  elect  Abraham  Lincoln  to  the 
presidency. 

The  feeling  of  unrest  in  the  South  was  growing. 
Threats  of  secession  continued,  and  became  so  frequent 
that  Lincoln  began  to  wonder  if  the  South  really  meant 
it.  Every  effort  was  made  to  get  him  to  say  something 
that  would  satisfy  the  South  of  his  kindly  feeling,  or 
something  that  would  persuade  his  equally  violent  anti- 
slavery  friends  in  the  North  that  he  meant  to  do  no 
thing  to  strengthen  the  cause  of  slavery.  To  those  who 
tried  to  get  him  to  say  what  he  intended  to  do  he 
answered :  "  The  time  comes  upon  every  man  when  it 


THE  ELECTION  79 

is  best  for  him  to  keep  his  lips  closed.  That  time  has 
come  upon  me."  And  when  they  insisted  on  his  assur 
ing  the  South  that  he  would  not  interfere  with  slavery, 
he  only  answered  by  reminding1  them  of  what  he  had 
said  in  his  many  speeches  in  the  past :  "  Those  who 
will  not  read  or  heed  what  I  have  already  publicly  said 
would  not  read  or  heed  a  repetition  of  it.  4  If  they  hear 
not  Moses  and  the  prophets,  neither  will  they  be  per 
suaded,  though  one  rose  from  the  dead.'  "  So  he  wrote 
no  letters,  and  made  no  speeches,  but  waited  patiently 
and  in  silence  for  the  people  to  make  their  choice. 

The  men  who  had  been  candidates  for  the  Repub 
lican  nomination  for  the  presidency,  and  particularly 
William  H.  Seward  of  New  York  and  Salmon  P.  Chase 
of  Ohio,  wrote  and  spoke  and  worked  day  and  night  in 
aid  of  his  election.  Seward  gave  to  his  home  newspaper 
on  the  night  of  his  own  defeat  an  editorial  article  in 
which  he  said:  "No  truer  or  firmer  defender  of  the 
Republican  faith  could  have  been  found  than  the  dis 
tinguished  citizen  on  whom  the  honors  of  the  nomi 
nation  have  fallen."  The  men  of  letters,  Holmes, 
Whittier,  Bryant,  Lowell,  and  George  William  Curtis, 
came  at  once  to  his  support.  But  the  entire  North  was 
not  friendly.  There  were  the  abolitionists,  many  of 
whom  fought  him  bitterly  and  applied  to  him  that 
scornful  name,  "  the  Slave  Hound  of  Illinois."  Al 
though  their  only  hope  of  ever  getting  rid  of  slavery 
lay  in  his  election,  they  refused  to  trust  him.  More 
disappointing  to  him  than  the  unreasoning  enmity  of 
the  abolitionists  was  the  unfriendly  feeling  of  many  of 
the  preachers  in  his  own  town  of  Springfield.  He  could 
not  understand  it.  Nor  could  they  understand,  in  after 
years,  how  it  was  that  they  had  so  misjudged  him. 

"  These  men,"  he  said,  "  well  know  that  I  am  for 


80  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

freedom  in  the  Territories,  freedom  everywhere  as  fat 
as  law  will  permit,  and  that  my  opponents  are  for  slav 
ery.  They  know  this,  and  yet  with  this  book"  (draw 
ing  the  New  Testament  from  his  pocket)  "  in  their 
hands,  in  the  light  of  which  human  bondage  cannot 
live  a  moment,  they  are  going  to  vote  against  me.  I 
do  not  understand  it  at  all.  I  know  there  is  a  God, 
and  that  He  hates  injustice  and  slavery.  I  see  the 
storm  coming,  and  I  know  that  His  hand  is  in  it.  If  He 
has  a  place  and  work  for  me,  and  I  think  He  has,  I 
believe  I  am  ready.  I  am  nothing,  but  truth  is  every 
thing  ;  I  know  I  am  right  because  I  know  that  liberty 
is  right.  .  .  .  Douglas  does  n't  care  whether  slavery 
is  voted  up  or  down,  but  God  cares,  and  humanity 
cares,  and  I  care,  and  with  God's  help  I  shall  not  fail. 
I  may  not  see  the  end ;  but  it  will  come,  .  .  .  and 
these  men  will  find  they  have  not  read  their  Bible 
right." 

The  future  as  he  saw  it  was  in  God's  hands.  As  he 
heard  from  the  South  the  mutterings  of  rebellion,  the 
threats  of  the  ruin  that  would  come  upon  the  country 
if  he  should  be  chosen  its  President,  a  sense  of  his  own 
helplessness  and  of  his  need  of  divine  strength  came 
to  him.  He  grew  more  religious  as  this  sense  of  need 
became  greater.  "  If  any  church  will  make  as  its  only 
requirement  obedience  to  the  command,  'Thou  shalt 
love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart  and  soul  and 
strength,  and  thy  neighbor  as  thyself,' "  he  declared, 
"  I  will  join  it." 

As  the  months  passed  the  excitement  grew.  Lincoln 
kept  silence  at  home  while  Douglas  traveled  over  the 
country,  in  the  South  as  well  as  in  the  North,  address 
ing  the  people  in  his  passionate,  imperious  way  and 
seeking  to  arouse  them  to  a  sense  of  the  dangers  they 


THE  ELECTION  81 

were  facing.  He  boldly  attacked  the  Southern  politi 
cians  for  their  threats  of  breaking  up  the  Union,  and 
appealed  to  the  loyalty  of  the  masses  who  had  always 
listened  to  him  before,  only  to  find  they  had  lost  faith 
in  him  and  were  bent  on  his  defeat. 

The  telegrams  on  election  night  soon  told  of  Lin 
coln's  success.  Before  morning  he  fell  into  one  of 
his  melancholy  moods,  weighed  down  with  the  vision  of 
a  divided  country  to  govern  and  a  bitter  war  to  fight, 
and  wanting  to  be  left  alone  with  his  anxious  thoughts. 
In  the  strain  of  the  excitement  which  he  was  going 
through,  there  came  to  him  a  vision  that  seemed  to  fore 
tell  disaster.  From  his  boyhood  he  had  believed  that 
through  men's  dreams  come  promises  and  warnings  for 
their  guidance,  from  on  high.  He  had  thrown  himself 
upon  a  couch  to  rest  and,  as  he  lay  there,  he  saw  his 
giant  figure  reflected  in  a  mirror.  But  there  were  two 
images  of  himself,  the  face  of  one  bearing  the  flush  of 
health,  while  the  other  was  gray,  with  something  of  the 
pallor  of  death  upon  it.  It  made  him  uneasy,  and  he  got 
up  and  walked  about  to  get  rid  of  the  horror  it  gave 
him ;  yet  when  he  came  back  a  second  and  a  third  time, 
the  double  image  was  still  there.  He  spoke  of  it  to 
Mrs.  Lincoln,  and  they  made  up  their  minds  that  this 
was  a  prophecy  that  he  was  to  be  President  twice,  but 
that  he  would  not  live  through  his  second  term. 

In  one  of  his  dreams  he  saw  himself  passing  through 
a  great  throng  of  people.  Men  made  way  for  him,  but 
as  they  did  so,  one  said  with  scorn,  "  He  's  a  common- 
looking  fellow."  "  Friend,"  he  said  in  his  dream,  u  the 
Lord  prefers  common-looking  people ;  that  is  why  He 
made  so  many  of  them." 

During  the  next  four  months  the  excitement  contin 
ued  at  fever-heat.  The  Southern  leaders  began  to  carry 


82  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

out  the  threats  they  had  made  during  the  campaign. 
The  conspiracy  to  break  up  the  Union  became  a  reality 
four  days  after  the  election,  when  the  Senators  from 
South  Carolina  resigned.  The  Southern  States  held 
conventions,  voted  to  withdraw  from  the  Union,  and 
provided  millions  of  dollars  for  war.  The  South  was 
confident  that  secession  would  come  about  without  shed 
ding  a  drop  of  blood,  while  the  North  was  panic-stricken, 
ready  to  give  up  almost  anything  that  the  South  might 
ask.  Until  he  should  become  President  in  March, 
Lincoln  was  helpless.  He  kept  his  temper  sweet,  as  he 
had  learned  to  do  in  his  long  struggle  with  adversity. 
At  the  mass  meeting  held  in  celebration  of  his  elec 
tion  he  was  able  to  say :  "  In  all  our  rejoicings  let  us 
neither  express  nor  cherish  any  hard  feelings  toward 
any  citizen  who  has  differed  with  us.  Let  us  at  all  times 
remember  that  all  American  citizens  are  brothers  of  a 
common  country." 

To  those  who  were  urging  the  North  to  give  up  all 
that  it  had  won  by  the  election,  he  privately  counseled 
patience  and  firmness.  "  There  is  no  possible  compro 
mise  upon  the  extension  of  slavery,"  he  wrote.  "On 
that  point  hold  firm,  as  with  a  chain  of  steel." 

As  the  time  drew  near  when  he  must  go  East  to  take 
up  his  duties  as  President,  he  went  from  Springfield  for 
a  little  visit  to  his  stepmother  at  her  farm  near  Charles 
ton,  Illinois.  He  visited  his  father's  grave  and  left  direc 
tions  for  a  monument  to  his  father's  memory.  Here  he 
met  the  survivors  of  the  Johnston  and  Hanks  families 
with  whom  he  had  come  to  Illinois,  a  barefooted  immi 
grant,  thirty-one  years  before.  The  mother,  whose  love 
had  followed  him  through  all  the  years,  gave  him  her 
blessing,  and  as  in  tears  she  said  good-by,  told  him  of 
her  fear  that  wicked  men  would  kill  him.  To  this  same 


THE   ELECTION  83 

melancholy  prophecy  which  another  old-time  friend 
gave  him  he  answered  gayly,  "  Well,  Hannah,  if  they 
do  kill  me,  I  shall  never  die  again." 

On  the  morning  of  February  11,  1861,  it  rained 
neavily.  A  special  train  had  been  provided  to  take  the 
new  President  and  his  party  to  Washington.  Two  or 
three  hundred  people  had  gathered  at  the  little  Spring 
field  station.  Just  as  the  train  was  starting,  Mr.  Lin 
coln  asked  the  conductor  to  wait  a  moment.  He  turned 
toward  the  people,  removed  his  tall  hat,  paused  for 
several  seconds  until  he  could  control  his  emotions, 
and  then  slowly  and  with  deep  feeling  gave  them  this 
simple  farewell :  — 

«  "  No  one,  not  in  my  situation,  can  appreciate  my  feel 
ing  of  sadness  at  this  parting.  To  this  place,  and  the 
kindness  of  these  people,  I  owe  everything.  Here  I  have 
lived  a  quarter  of  a  century,  and  have  passed  from 
a  young  to  an  old  man.  Here  my  children  have  been 
born,  and  one  is  buried.  All  the  strange  checkered 
past  seems  to  crowd  upon  my  mind.  I  now  leave,  not 
knowing  when  or  whether  ever  I  may  return,  with  a 
task  before  me  greater  than  that  which  rested  upon 
Washington.  Without  the  assistance  of  that  Divine 
Being  who  ever  attended  him,  I  cannot  succeed.  With 
that  assistance,  1  cannot  fail.  Trusting  in  Him,  who 
can  go  with  me,  and  remain  with  you,  and  be  every 
where  for  good,  let  us  confidently  hope  that  all  will  yet 
be  well.  To  His  care  commending  you,  as  I  hope  in 
your  prayers  you  will  commend  me,  I  bid  you  an  affec 
tionate  farewell." 

An  old  friend,  who  stood  with  bared  head  in  the 
pouring  rain  while  these  words  were  spoken,  has  de 
scribed  the  scene  for  us  :  "  We  have  heard  Mr.  Lincoln 
speak  upon  a  hundred  different  occasions,  but  we  never 


84  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

saw  him  so  profoundly  affected,  nor  did  he  ever  utter 
an  address  which  seemed  to  us  as  full  of  simple  and 
touching  eloquence.  .  .  .  Although  it  was  raining  fast 
when  he  began  to  speak,  every  hat  was  lifted,  and 
every  head  bent  forward  to  catch  the  last  words  of  the 
departing  chief." 


UNIV.    OF 


CHAPTER  Xin 

THE   PRESIDENCY 

THE  new  President  had  decided  to  make  a  round 
about  journey  to  Washington,  stopping  on  the  way  at 
the  chief  cities  of  the  North  and  East.  He  had  a  special 
purpose  in  doing  this.  Though  he  had  faith  in  the  peo 
ple,  he  was  not  sure  that  they  were  yet  fully  aroused 
to  their  responsibility ;  and  he  realized  that  they  were 
not  at  all  sure  of  him.  He  must  lead  them  to  see  that 
the  preservation  of  the  Union  depended  on  them. 

At  Indianapolis,  his  appeal  to  the  citizens  was  meant 
for  the  loyal  people  of  all  the  States.  He  said :  "  I  ap 
peal  to  you  again  to  constantly  bear  in  mind  that  not 
with  politicians,  not  with  Presidents,  not  with  office- 
seekers,  but  with  you,  is  the  question  :  Shall  the  Union 
and  shall  the  liberties  of  this  country  be  preserved  to 
the  latest  generations  ?  " 

War  was  at  hand.  South  Carolina,  Mississippi, 
Florida,  Alabama,  Georgia,  Louisiana,  and  Texas,  one 
at  a  time,  had  declared  themselves  to  be  independent 
States,  and  by  resolution  proclaimed  the  Union  at 
an  end  between  themselves  and  the  United  States  of 
America.  Only  two  days  before  Lincoln  started  from 
Springfield,  Jefferson  Davis  was  elected  President  of 
the  Confederate  States  of  America.  While  Lincoln 
was  greeting  hundreds  of  thousands  of  loyal  citizens 
of  the  North  on  his  journey  to  Washington,  Davis  was 
on  his  journey  to  his  inauguration  at  Montgomery,  Ala 
bama,  making  speeches  in  all  the  cities  and  promising 
his  Southern  audiences  that  those  who  should  interfere 


86  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

with  the  new  nation  would  "  smell  Southern  powde:1 
and  feel  Southern  steel." 

On  his  journey  Lincoln  came  face  to  face  with  an 
uncounted  multitude  of  loyal  men,  and  left  them  in' 
spired  with  a  stronger  faith  in  the  cause  and  a  greatei 
loyalty  to  the  Union.  For  nearly  a  year  he  had  kept 
silence,  and  now,  as  his  time  of  power  and  responsi 
bility  at  last  approached,  he  spoke  cautiously,  arousing 
no  passions,  making  neither  promises  nor  threats,  but 
trying,  in  his  own  gentle  way,  to  learn  for  himself  how 
strong  was  the  people's  love  of  country  and  how  far 
they  would  go  with  him  in  his  task  of  saving  the  Union. 

His  was  a  strange  nature.  He  felt  the  sorrows  of 
men  as  few  have  ever  done,  for  he  had  sounded  the 
depths  of  human  suffering.  He  sympathized  and  he 
understood.  At  the  same  time  he  did  not  allow  the 
seriousness  of  life  to  break  him  down  or  make  his  sweet 
and  gentle  nature  bitter.  Men  did  not  understand  how 
he  could  have  the  heart  to  laugh  while  all  the  world 
was  in  tears ;  but  somehow,  in  his  laughter  as  well  as 
in  his  tears,  he  found  a  way  into  men's  hearts,  and  he 
held  his  place  there  as  much  by  the  cheer  he  brought 
as  by  the  sorrow  that  he  shared. 

The  events  which  were  happening  in  the  South  dur 
ing  this  momentous  journey  had  aroused  the  anxiety 
of  the  whole  country.  The  new  President's  speeches 
showed  how  fully  he  realized  the  seriousness  of  the  sit 
uation  ;  and  yet  he  was  able,  at  times,  to  play  with  his 
audience  as  he  had  done  in  his  happiest  moods  at  home. 
At  Lebanon,  Indiana,  when  the  car  on  which  he  stood 
jerked  about  and  almost  threw  him  from  the  platform, 
he  laughingly  called  the  attention  of  the  crowd  to  how 
well  he  was  learning  the  poetry  of  motion ;  and  at 
Thorntown,  he  had  nis  fun  with  the  anxious  company 


THE  PRESIDENCY  87 

that  had  gathered  to  see  him,  excusing  himself  from 
a  speech  because  there  was  no  time  to  make  one,  but 
offering  to  tell  them  a  story  if  every  person  there 
would  promise  solemnly  never  to  repeat  it.  As  soon 
as  the  promise  was  secured,  the  train  pulled  out,  as 
Lincoln  doubtless  knew  it  would,  leaving  the  crowd 
without  its  story,  but  shouting  after  the  departing 
President,  "  We  won't  ever  tell." 

At  the  little  town  of  Westfield,  New  York,  he  said, 
"  I  have  a  correspondent  in  this  place,  a  little  girl 
named  Grace  Bedell,  and  I  would  like  to  see  her." 
Grace  was  there,  eleven  years  old,  and  Lincoln  stepped 
from  the  train  to  greet  her.  The  year  before  she  had 
written  to  him  to  suggest  that  he  would  look  better 
with  a  beard,  and  he  had  answered  her  letter.  And  now, 
with  all  the  cares  of  state  and  the  thoughts  of  war 
crowding  his  mind,  he  was  able  to  remember  the  little 
girl  and  where  she  lived ;  and  he  was  simple-minded 
enough  to  say  to  her  as  he  greeted  her,  "  You  see  I 
have  let  these  whiskers  grow  for  you,  Grace." 

He  continued  to  remember  that  there  was  no  per 
sonal  tribute  to  himself  in  the  outpouring  of  the  people 
as  they  greeted  him  on  his  journey.  It  merely  showed 
their  loyalty  to  the  country  he  had  been  called  to  serve. 
"  It  is  true,"  he  said  at  Albany,  "  that,  while  I  hold 
myself,  without  mock  modesty,  the  humblest  of  all 
individuals  that  have  ever  been  elevated  to  the  presi 
dency,  I  have  a  more  difficult  task  to  perform  than 
any  one  of  them." 

In  the  same  humility  of  spirit  he  said  to  another 
gathering  of  Union  men :  "  I  cannot  but  know  what 
you  all  know,  that  without  a  name,  perhaps  without  a 
reason  why  I  should  have  a  name,  there  has  fallen  upon 
me  a  task  such  as  did  not  rest  even  upon  the  Father 


88  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

of  his  Country ;  and  so  feeling,  I  can  turn  and  look 
for  that  support  without  which  it  will  be  impossible 
for  me  to  perform  that  great  task.  I  turn,  then,  and 
look  to  the  American  people,  and  to  that  God  who  has 
never  forsaken  them." 

At  Philadelphia,  on  Washington's  birthday,  he  was 
asked  to  speak  at  Independence  Hall.  Here  he  gave 
new  expression  to  the  spirit  which  had  given  the  De 
claration  of  Independence  to  the  world,  and  here  there 
seemed  to  come  to  him  again  the  thought  that  in  time 
death  by  violence  might  be  his  lot.  To  a  friend  he 
once  told  of  the  many  times  he  had  been  warned  that 
he  would  be  killed.  "  Soon  after  I  was  nominated  at 
Chicago,"  he  said,  "  I  began  to  receive  letters  threat 
ening  my  life.  The  first  one  or  two  made  me  a  little 
uncomfortable,  but  I  came  at  length  to  look  for  a  regu 
lar  installment  of  this  kind  of  correspondence  in  every 
week's  mail,  and  up  to  inauguration  day  I  was  in  con 
stant  receipt  of  such  letters,  but  they  have  ceased  to 
give  me  any  apprehension."  The  friend  expressed  sur 
prise  at  this,  but  Lincoln  replied  in  his  peculiar  way, 
"  There  is  nothing  like  getting  used  to  things." 

The  morning  of  March  4  found  the  new  President 
still  in  doubt  as  to  who  were  to  be  in  his  cabinet,  for 
Seward,  whom  he  had  depended  upon  from  the  first, 
had  taken  offense  because  Chase  was  to  be  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury,  and  he  was  now  declining  to  serve 
as  Secretary  of  State.  At  the  last  moment,  and  after 
the  ceremony  of  the  inauguration  was  over,  Lincoln 
persuaded  Seward  to  change  his  mind,  and  the  cabi< 
net  list  was  complete.  William  H.  Seward  of  New 
York  was  to  be  Secretary  of  State ;  Salmon  P.  Chase 
of  Ohio,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury ;  Simon  Cameron 
of  Pennsylvania,  Secretary  of  War;  Edward  Bates  of 


THE  PRESIDENCY  89 

Missouri,  Attorney-General ;  Gideon  Welles  of  Con 
necticut,  Secretary  of  the  Navy ;  Caleb  B.  Smith  of 
Indiana,  Secretary  of  the  Interior ;  Montgomery  Blair 
of  Maryland,  Postmaster-General.  Of  these  seven 
men,  upon  whose  loyal  support  and  wise  advice  the 
success  of  his  administration  as  President  was  so 
largely  to  depend,  he  had  no  real  knowledge.  The  first 
four  were  chosen  because  in  the  nominating  convention 
at  Chicago  they  had  been  his  prominent  rivals  for  the 
presidency.  Bates  of  Missouri,  and  Blair  of  Maryland, 
he  had  chosen  because  they  were  from  slave  States 
and  so  could  help  him  in  the  effort  that  he  knew  must 
be  made  to  keep  the  slave  States  that  bordered  upon 
Mason  and  Dixon's  Line  loyal  to  the  Union.  Among 
them  all,  not  one  was  his  personal  friend ;  and  yet  it 
was  to  them  he  must  look  for  guidance  in  the  struggle 
he  was  now  entering. 

At  noon,  James  Buchanan,  the  retiring  President, 
worn  and  broken  with  the  cares  of  state,  and  glad  to 
escape  the  responsibilities  of  war,  called  at  Lincoln's 
hotel  and  the  two  drove  together  to  the  Capitol.  The 
day  was  clear  and  beautiful,  and  the  streets  and  public 
places  were  thronged.  A  peaceful  revolution  was  tak 
ing  place.  James  Buchanan,  the  friend  of  the  slave 
power,  who  without  protest  had  allowed  the  South  to 
take  possession  of  the  nation's  forts  and  arsenals,  was 
courteously  escorting  to  the  inauguration  Abraham 
Lincoln,  the  champion  of  the  Union,  who  on  his  part 
was  pledged  to  reclaim  from  the  seceding  States  the 
property  which  Buchanan  had  permitted  them  to  take. 
Close  beside  their  carriage  rode  a  guard  of  mounted 
soldiery.  At  every  corner,  on  the  housetops,  and  even 
underneath  the  platform  on  which  the  two  Presidents 
were  to  stand,  there  were  armed  men.  On  a  hilltop 


90  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

near  by  a  company  of  artillery  commanded  the  scene. 
It  was  a  peaceful  revolution,  but  the  spirit  of  war  was 
in  the  air.  "  All  thoughts  were  anxiously  directed  to 
an  impending  civil  war.  All  dreaded  it ;  all  sought  to 
avert  it.  While  the  inaugural  address  was  being  de 
livered,  devoted  altogether  to  saving  the  Union  without 
war,  insurgent  agents  were  in  the  city  seeking  to  de 
stroy  it  without  war.  .  .  .  Both  parties  deprecated  war ; 
but  one  of  them  would  make  war  rather  than  let  the 
nation  survive ;  and  the  other  would  accept  war  rather 
than  let  it  perish.  And  the  war  came."  Thus  Lincoln 
described  the  situation  four  years  later.  Many  of  the 
troops  that  guarded  the  presidential  party  wore  citi 
zens'  clothes,  and  the  day,  to  all  outward  seeming, 
gave  no  signs  of  the  feeling  that  stirred  every  man's 
heart.  The  excitement  was  intense.  As  far  as  the  eye 
could  see,  southward  into  Virginia  and  northward  into 
Maryland,  there  was  slave  territory,  and  on  every  side 
there  was  hostility  toward  all  that  the  new  President 
represented. 

As  Lincoln  rose  to  deliver  his  inaugural  address 
there  was  a  moment  of  embarrassment.  He  held  a 
gold-headed  cane  in  one  hand  and  his  printed  speech 
in  the  other.  When  he  took  off  his  new  high  hat,  he 
did  not  know  what  to  do  with  it.  He  is  said  to  have 
remarked  in  his  droll  way,  as  he  looked  up  at  the  mar 
ble  columns  of  the  Capitol,  "  I  don't  see  any  nail  on 
those  columns  to  hang  this  on."  Just  then  Stephen  A. 
Douglas,  for  so  many  years  his  rival,  stepped  forward 
and  took  the  hat,  as  he  remarked  with  a  smile,  u  If  I 
can't  be  President,  at  least  I  can  hold  his  hat." 

Lincoln's  old-time  friend,  Edward  D.  Baker,  who 
with  Lincoln  and  Douglas  had  practiced  law  on  the 
Illinois  circuit  twenty  years  before,  and  was  now  a 


THE  PRESIDENCY  91 

Senator  from  Oregon,  introduced  him  to  the  audience 
of  over  a  hundred  thousand  people  that  had  gathered 
by  the  east  portico  of  the  Capitol.  The  speech,  read 
in  a  clear  tenor  voice,  was  heard  throughout  the  vast 
throng,  and  the  next  morning  was  discussed  in  every 
household  in  the  land.  The  South  as  well  as  the  North 
had  been  waiting  to  learn  what  the  President  would  do. 
Would  he  let  the  "  wayward  States  depart  in  peace," 
as  one  of  his  advisers  had  urged  ?  Would  he  carry  war 
into  the  South,  and  compel  the  seceding  States  to  yield 
to  the  federal  power?  Or  would  he  wait  until  the  South 
should  strike  the  first  blow  ?  The  world  listened  eagerly 
to  this  first  expression  of  his  purposes  toward  the  South. 
The  speech  left  no  one  in  doubt  either  as  to  the  Presi 
dent's  intention  to  maintain  the  authority  of  the  gov 
ernment  and  defend  it  against  all  assaults,  or  as  to  his 
firm  determination  that  if  war  was  to  come,  the  South 
must  strike  the  first  blow.  To  the  South  he  said  :  "  In 
your  hands,  my  dissatisfied  fellow  countrymen,  and  not 
in  mine,  is  the  momentous  issue  of  civil  war.  The  gov 
ernment  will  not  assail  you.  You  can  have  no  conflict, 
without  being  yourselves  the  aggressors.  You  have  no 
oath  registered  in  heaven  to  destroy  the  government, 
while  I  shall  have  the  most  solemn  one  to  'preserve, 
protect,  and  defend  it.'  "  Nor  was  there  any  doubt  of 
his  kindly  feeling  toward  his  "  dissatisfied  fellow  coun 
trymen,"  for  in  the  face  of  threats  and  violence,  he  was 
still  able  to  reason  with  them  and  beg  them  to  wait 
patiently  a  little  longer  in  the  assurance  that  their 
rights  under  the  Constitution  and  the  laws  would  be  as 
secure  now  as  ever  they  had  been. 

The  closing  words  of  the  address,  written  by  Presi 
dent  Lincoln  upon  the  suggestion  of  Secretary  Seward, 
have  become  almost  as  familiar  to  the  American  people 


92  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

as  the  Gettysburg  oration  :  "  I  am  loath  to  close.  We 
are  not  enemies,  but  friends.  We  must  not  be  enemies. 
Though  passion  may  have  strained,  it  must  not  break 
our  bonds  of  affection.  The  mystic  chords  of  memory, 
stretching  from  every  battlefield  and  patriot  grave,  to 
every  living  heart  and  hearthstone,  all  over  this  broad 
land,  will  yet  swell  the  chorus  of  the  Union,  when  again 
touched,  as  surely  they  will  be,  by  the  better  angels  of 
our  nature." 

He  turned  to  the  venerable  Chief  Justice  of  the 
United  States,  Roger  B.  Taney,  and  with  his  hand  upon 
the  Bible  slowly  repeated  the  oath  :  "  I,  Abraham  Lin 
coln,  do  solemnly  swear  that  I  will  faithfully  execute 
the  office  of  President  of  the  United  States,  and  will, 
to  the  best  of  my  ability,  preserve,  protect,  and  defend 
V}he  Constitution  of  the  United  States." 


CHAPTER  XIV 

WAR    BEGINS 

THE  day,  which  had  opened  fair,  now  became  bleak 
Buchanan  drove  with  Lincoln  from  the  Capitol  to  th€ 
White  House,  and  there  bade  the  new  President  good- 
by.  As  Lincoln  entered  into  the  possession  of  the  bare 
and  comfortless  mansion  that  for  four  years  —  the  rest 
of  his  life  —  was  to  be  his  home,  he  felt  more  keenly 
than  ever  the  pang  of  loneliness  that  had  been  his  most 
familiar  experience.  He  soon  found  himself  in  the 
midst  of  a  mob  of  the  idly  curious  that  roamed  about 
the  place  as  if  it  belonged  to  them.  An  army  of  office- 
seekers  that  already  had  begun  to  make  his  life  a  bur 
den  were  camping  there  from  daybreak  until  they  were 
put  out  at  night,  watching  eagerly  for  a  chance  inter 
view  and  fairly  thrusting  their  applications  and  petitions 
into  his  pockets.  The  trouble  and  anxiety  that  the 
approach  of  war  had  brought,  bore  heavily  upon  him. 
The  persistency  of  the  men  who  sought  offices  at  his 
hands  at  this  distressing  time  was  so  great  that  the 
President  exclaimed,  "  I  feel  just  like  a  man  who  is 
trying  to  rent  out  apartments  in  one  end  of  his  house 
while  fire  is  raging  in  the  other." 

There  is  no  loneliness  to  compare  with  that  of  one 
who  finds  himself  in  the  midst  of  a  multitude  from 
whom  he  is  unable  to  escape  and  who  will  give  him 
neither  sympathy  nor  peace.  The  country  was  divided. 
The  nation's  arms  had  been  sent  to  Southern  forts  and 
arsenals,  and  its  soldiers  to  the  far-away  Indian  fron 
tier.  The  government  service  was  in  the  hands  of  men 


04  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

whom  he  neither  knew  nor  trusted.  How  many  of  them 
were  at  heart  hostile  to  the  Union,  no  one  could  tell. 
How  soon  the  armies  of  the  Confederate  States  mi^ht 
march  across  the  Potomac  and  make  the  city  of  Wash 
ington  the  capital  of  the  new  slave  republic,  he  could 
only  conjecture.  He  knew  that  the  regular  army  of  the 
United  States  had  been  scattered,  and  that  there  were 
only  a  few  hundred  soldiers  in  Washington  to  guard 
the  capital.  Its  commander,  General  W  infield  Scott, 
was  seventy-five  years  old  and  too  feeble  now  for  active 
service.  Seven  States,  with  seven  millions  of  people, 
had  declared  their  independence.  The  fate  of  the  other 
slave  States,  particularly  of  Virginia  and  Maryland, 
within  whose  borders  the  city  of  Washington  lay,  hung 
in  the  balance.  Every  effort  was  being  made  at  Rich 
mond  and  at  Baltimore,  by  Southern  conspirators  and 
those  in  sympathy  with  the  slave  Confederacy,  to  draw 
these  two  border  States  into  the  secession  movement. 
There  was  only  a  faint  hope  that  they  might  remain 
loyal  to  the  Union.  A  rash  word  or  an  unwise  step 
would  drive  Virginia  and  Maryland,  and  possibly  Del 
aware  and  Kentucky  and  Missouri,  into  the  Confed 
eracy,  and  plunge  the  country  into  war,  and  that,  too, 
at  a  time  when  there  were  no  troops  at  hand  to  defend 
the  capital,  and  the  government  was  without  arms  or 
ammunition  or  money  or  credit. 

This  was  the  situation  as  President  Lincoln  saw  it 
yn  the  day  he  entered  the  White  House.  It  was  a  time 
that  called  for  patience  and  wisdom.  He  saw  now  still 
more  clearly  the  truth  of  his  prophetic  words  at  Indian 
apolis,  that  the  question  of  preserving  the  liberties  of 
the  country  was  not  with  politicians,  nor  with  office- 
seekers,  nor  with  Presidents,  but  with  the  people.  And 
be  saw  more  clearly  than  any  of  his  advisers  that  he 


WAR  BEGINS  95 

could  not  hope  to  save  the  Union  unless  he  could  win 
the  confidence  of  the  people  and  command  their  help 
in  all  that  he  had  to  do.  He  resolved  to  treat  the  South 
with  all  possible  patience,  and  to  wait  for  the  South  to 
strike  the  first  blow.  Trusting  the  people  as  he  did,  he 
felt  sure  that  if  the  South  should  fire  on  the  flag,  the 
North  would  unite  to  resist  the  attack.  It  is  interesting 
to  imagine  in  what  different  ways  the  other  great  men 
of  that  day  would  have  met  the  difficulties  that  Lincoln 
settled  with  such  wise  forbearance ;  how  Seward  would 
have  declared  war  not  only  against  the  rebellious  States, 
but  against  the  European  powers  as  well ;  how  Thaddeus 
Stevens  would  have  proclaimed  the  slaves  free  from 
the  very  beginning  and  so  lost  the  support  of  Delaware 
and  Maryland  and  Kentucky  and  Missouri ;  how  Gen 
eral  Scott  would  have  recognized  the  Confederacy  as 
an  independent  nation  ;  and  how  Stephen  A.  Douglas 
would  have  gone  boldly  into  the  heart  of  the  South  and 
pronounced  its  leaders  traitors  worthy  of  death ;  and 
how,  in  the  plans  of  all  these  counselors  who  differed 
with  Lincoln  so  often,  there  was  a  certainty  of  ruin, 
while  the  only  hope  of  saving  the  Union  proved  to  be  in 
the  slow  and  cautious  policy  of  Lincoln,  which  permit 
ted  him  to  act  only  after  he  had  learned  all  there  was  to 
be  learned,  and,  after  taking  counsel,  had  made  up  his 
mind  what  course  the  people  wanted  him  to  pursue. 

The  day  after  the  inauguration  brought  him  face  to 
face  with  a  question  which  he  must  soon  answer.  If  he 
answered  it  in  one  way,  the  Union  would  be  dissolved 
and  the  Constitution  which  he  had  just  promised 
44 to  preserve,  protect,  and  defend"  would  be  set  at 
naught,  if  he  answered  it  in  the  only  other  way,  the 
South  would  declare  war. 

Within  a  little  island  fortification  in  Charleston 


96  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Harbor,  known  as  Fort  Sumter,  Major  Robert  Ander 
son  and  a  hundred  and  twenty-eight  men  upheld  the 
authority  of  the  national  government,  and  from  its 
flagstaff  each  day  flung  to  the  breeze  the  flag  of  the 
United  States.  They  were  really  prisoners  within  its 
walls,  for  across  the  bay  five  thousand  Confederate 
soldiers  under  General  Beauregard  were  encamped 
beneath  the  flag  of  the  Palmetto  State  awaiting  the 
command  to  open  fire.  Within  the  fort  the  provisions 
were  almost  gone.  The  governor  of  South  Carolina  had 
forbidden  President  Buchanan  to  come  to  Sumter's  re 
lief.  But  President  Lincoln  had  said  in  his  inaugural 
address  that  the  power  confided  to  him  would  be  used 
44  to  hold,  occupy,  and  possess  the  property  and  places 
belonging  to  the  government,"  and  that  44  the  declared 
purpose  of  the  Union  "  was  "  to  defend  itself."  Fort 
Sumter  belonged  to  the  national  government,  and  its 
men  had  reached  a  point  where  they  must  either  desert 
their  place  of  duty  or  face  starvation.  On  March  5, 
President  Lincoln  received  word  from  Major  Anderson 
that  there  were  only  provisions  enough  to  last  a  week,  and 
that  unless  help  came  soon  the  fort  must  be  abandoned. 
What  was  President  Lincoln  to  do  ?  Should  he  send 
food  to  Anderson  and  his  men  ?  Or  must  the  flag  be 
hauled  down  ? 

Lincoln  determined  to  find  out  if  possible  just  what 
the  feeling  of  the  people  of  South  Carolina  was,  and 
whether  they  would  plunge  the  country  into  war  rather 
than  allow  the  handful  of  Union  soldiers  in  Charleston 
Harbor  to  be  fed.  The  President's  former  law  partner, 
Ward  H.  Lamon,  a  Virginian  by  birth,  offered  to  go  to 
Charleston  and  see  what  the  people  there  were  likely 
to  do  if  the  President  should  make  good  his  inaugural 
pledge  of  holding  all  "places  belonging  to  the  govern- 


WAR  BEGINS  97 

ment."  It  was  a  dangerous  journey.  Secretary  Seward 
tried  to  prevent  it,  insisting  that  Lamon  could  not 
come  back  alive ;  and  yet  it  was  of  the  utmost  impor 
tance  to  know  the  whole  situation  at  once.  Lamon 
was  eager  to  go,  and  the  President  said,  "  By  Jing !  I  '11 
risk  him.  Go,  Lamon,  and  God  bless  you  !  Bring  back  a 
palmetto  if  you  can't  bring  good  news."  Lamon  went. 
He  soon  learned  the  temper  of  the  South,  and  reported 
to  the  President  all  that  he  had  discovered.  Lincoln 
then  put  to  each  member  of  the  cabinet  this  question : 
"  Assuming  it  to  be  possible  to  now  provision  Fort 
Sumter,  under  all  the  circumstances  is  it  wise  to  attempt 
it  ?  "  General  Scott,  the  commander  of  the  army,  had 
already  advised  against  it,  and  now  all  but  one  of  the 
President's  cabinet  were  agreeing  with  General  Scott. 
In  the  face  of  this,  the  President  determined  to  hold 
the  fort.  A  vessel  was  made  ready  and  sent  to  Charles 
ton,  and,  according  to  promise,  Governor  Pickens  was 
notified. 

Before  the  vessel  containing  food  for  the  besieged 
men  reached  the  harbor,  General  Beauregard  ordered 
an  attack  on  the  little  fort.  For  two  days  Major  An 
derson  and  his  half-starved  men  kept  up  a  brave  but 
hopeless  defense.  At  last  the  flag,  torn  by  hostile  bul 
lets,  was  lowered.  The  little  garrison,  holding  out  as 
long  as  it  could  without  food  or  ammunition,  surren 
dered.  A  new  and  strange  banner  was  raised  over 
Sumter.  "  And  the  war  came." 

On  Sunday  morning,  April  14,  1861,  the  news 
flashed  to  every  village  in  the  land,  "  Sumter  has  been 
fired  on.  Sumter  has  fallen."  From  that  moment  the 
flag  of  the  Union,  that  had  been  only  a  decoration, 
became  a  sacred  thing,  that  brought  tears  to  men's  eyes 
as  they  saw  it  outlined  against  the  sky. 


98  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

The  next  morning  the  President  issued  a  proclama 
tion  calling  for  seventy-five  thousand  troops  and  con 
vening  a  special  session  of  Congress  to  meet  on  July  4. 
In  this  proclamation  he  said :  "  I  appeal  to  all  loyal 
citizens  to  ...  aid  this  effort  to  maintain  the  honor, 
the  integrity,  and  the  existence  of  our 4  National  Union  ' 
and  the  perpetuity  of  popular  government,  and  to 
redress  wrongs  already  long  enough  endured."  Many 
loyal  men  of  the  country  responded  instantly.  Within 
a  week,  camps  were  established  and  men  and  boys  from 
every  station  in  life  were  taking  their  first  lessons  in 
military  science  and  getting  ready  to  fight  for  the  flag. 
The  streets  in  every  city  echoed  the  tramp  of  marching 
men,  and  every  wind  carried  to  anxious  ears  the  rattle 
of  the  drum  and  the  scream  of  the  bugle.  And  so  was 
created  the  volunteer  army  which,  before  peace  came 
again,  numbered  nearly  three  millions  of  men. 

The  war,  long  threatened,  had  begun ;  and  of  the  army 
of  the  Union,  soon  to  become  the  greatest  army  that 
the  world  ever  knew,  Abraham  Lincoln,  whose  military 
training  had  been  confined  to  an  eight  weeks'  campaign 
against  Indians  that  he  never  saw,  became  the  com- 
mander-in-chief. 

The  news  that  Fort  Sumter  had  fallen  put  an  end 
at  once  to  party  differences  in  the  North.  Democrats 
and  Republicans  forgot  politics  and  became  Union 
men.  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  Senator  from  Illinois,  and 
both  in  Congress  and  among  the  people  the  leader  of 
the  Democratic  party,  hurried  to  the  White  House  to 
offer  his  help  to  President  Lincoln  in  putting  down 
the  rebellion.  It  was  the  one  thing  that  the  President 
needed  most.  Lincoln  and  Douglas,  rivals  no  longer 
but  loyal  friends,  spent  three  hours  together  on  that 
fateful  Sunday  evening  planning  to  save  the  Union. 


WAR  BEGINS  99 

Senator  Douglas  gave  to  the  newspapers  as  soon  as 
he  left  the  White  House  the  information  that  "  Mr. 
Douglas  called  on  the  President  this  evening  and  had 
an  interesting  conversation  on  the  present  condition 
of  the  country.  The  substance  of  the  conversation  was 
that  ...  Mr.  Douglas  .  .  .  was  prepared  to  sustain 
the  President  in  the  exercise  of  all  his  constitutional 
functions  to  preserve  the  Union,  and  maintain  the 
government,  and  defend  the  federal  capital."  From 
that  meeting,  the  last  that  ever  took  place  between 
the  two  friends,  Douglas  went  to  Illinois  to  rally  the 
people  of  that  State,  and  especially  the  Democrats,  to 
Lincoln's  support.  To  the  legislature  on  April  25, 
1861,  he  made  his  last  great  public  address,  for  he 
died  a  few  weeks  later.  "  Whenever  our  government 
is  assailed,"  he  declared,  "  the  shortest  way  to  peace  is 
the  most  stupendous  preparation  for  war."  He  closed 
by  saying :  "  It  is  with  a  sad  heart,  with  a  grief  that 
I  have  never  before  experienced,  that  I  have  to  con 
template  this  fearful  struggle ;  but  I  believe,  in  my 
conscience,  that  it  is  a  duty  we  owe  to  ourselves,  our 
children,  and  our  God,  to  protect  this  government  and 
that  flag  from  every  assailant,  be  he  who  he  may." 

It  was  the  last  message  of  a  great  man.  Its  effect 
was  instantaneous.  Not  only  in  Illinois,  but  through 
out  the  North,  the  men  of  the  nation  gave  evidence  to 
their  President  that  they  would  stand  by  him  and 
defend  the  Union  until  the  flag  should  float  in  peace 
over  every  foot  of  soil. 


CHAPTER  XV 
A  PEOPLE'S  SORROW 

THE  attack  on  Fort  Sumter  was  a  call  to  arms, 
South  as  well  as  North.  The  chief  difference  was  that 
it  found  the  South  ready,  while  it  took  the  North  by 
surprise.  Southern  orators  charged  that  in  sending 
bread  to  Sumter,  Lincoln  had  "  invaded  sacred  soil " 
and  was  trying  to  "  coerce "  a  sovereign  State.  On 
April  17,  Virginia,  by  the  vote  of  a  bare  majority, 
joined  the  Confederacy ;  and  in  May  Tennessee,  also 
by  a  close  vote,  and  Arkansas  and  North  Carolina  fol 
lowed.  The  Confederate  States  of  America,  eleven  in 
number,  with  Jefferson  Davis  of  Mississippi  as  Presi 
dent,  and  Alexander  H.  Stephens  of  Georgia  as  Vice- 
President,  had  organized  what  they  dreamed  would 
become  a  new  republic,  with  the  right  to  buy  and  sell 
and  hold  human  beings  as  slaves  under  national  pro 
tection  as  its  chief  principle  of  government,  and  the 
fear  of  losing  that  right  through  Lincoln's  election  its 
only  reason  for  being. 

The  Confederate  leaders  had  hoped  to  unite  all  the 
slave  States,  but  they  were  doomed  to  disappointment. 
Maryland  and  Kentucky  and  Missouri  remained  loyal, 
although  among  their  citizens  many  showed  their  sym 
pathy  with  the  South  by  enlisting  and  marching  with 
"  the  boys  in  gray."  To  keep  these  border  States  loyal 
was  Lincoln's  constant  purpose,  while  many  were  the 
efforts  to  break  them  away  from  his  firm  yet  sympa 
thetic  hold. 

The  different  States,  in  proportion  to  their  popula- 


A   PEOPLE'S   SORROW  101 

tion,  began  at  once  to  organize  their  soldiers  into  regi 
ments  and  put  them  under  the  command  of  the  Presi 
dent,  to  be  trained  for  war.  To  the  city  of  Washing 
ton,  defenseless  on  the  Virginia  border,  the  first  troops 
hastened,  reaching  the  capital  four  days  after  the 
President's  call  went  forth.  The  city  was  practically 
in  a  state  of  siege.  Barricades  of  all  kinds  had  been 
put  up  about  the  public  buildings.  Famine  was  threat 
ening,  and  the  people  were  in  terror  lest  a  few  of  the 
Southern  regiments,  already  in*  camp  and  awaiting 
marching  orders,  should  move  against  the  city.  Wait 
ing  through  the  weary  night  for  the  Massachusetts  and 
New  York  regiments  to  reach  Washington,  Lincoln 
walked  the  corridors  of  the  W  hite  House  alone,  repeat 
ing  to  himself  the  despairing  cry,  "  Why  don't  they 
come  ?  Why  don't  they  come  ?  " 

The  conduct  of  the  war  presented  many  problems  to 
the  President  and  his  military  advisers.  The  Confeder 
ate  coast-line  from  the  Potomac  to  the  Mexican  bor 
der,  many  thousands  of  miles  long,  was  blockaded,  and 
had  to  be  watched  to  prevent  the  South  from  getting 
provisions  or  arms  or  relief  from  abroad.  The  border 
line  of  Virginia  and  Tennessee  and  Arkansas  must 
be  guarded  lest  injury  be  done  to  the  Northern  cities, 
particularly  Washington  and  Baltimore  and  Philadel 
phia.  The  Mississippi  River,  with  the  Ohio  opening 
the  way  into  the  great  Middle  West,  must  be  patrolled 
by  war-boats  and  guarded  by  forts  and  military  camps. 
With  the  same  vigilance  must  they  watch  the  Potomac 
on  the  east  and  the  Cumberland  and  the  Tennessee 
rivers  on  the  west.  At  all  hazards  Washington,  the 
national  capital,  must  be  kept  in  safety. 

Three  general  fields  of  military  activity  seemed  to 
open :  the  capture  of  Richmond,  the  new  Confederate 


10*  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

capital;  the  establishment,  through  the  army,  of  the 
federal  authority  among  the  loyal  Union  people  of  east 
ern  Tennessee  by  way  of  the  Tennessee  River ;  and 
the  capture  of  the  Confederate  fortifications  along  the 
Mississippi,  so  as  to  open  the  "  Father  of  Waters  "  to 
free  passage  by  Union  vessels.  To  carry  out  this  plan 
of  warfare  required  the  building-up  and  training  of  a 
larger  army  than  the  world  had  yet  known.  It  required 
four  years  in  camp  and  on  the  march,  on  the  battle 
field,  in  attack,  and  on  retreat,  until  the  South,  whose 
troops  were  fewer  and  whose  wealth  was  less,  should 
at  last  be  worn  out  and  cry,  "  Enough." 

The  story  of  the  four  years  of  waiting  and  fighting 
cannot  be  told  here.  Lincoln,  as  commander-in-chief  of 
army  and  navy  and  President  of  the  United  States, 
had  it  all  to  oversee  and  direct.  The  sorrows  it  brought 
were  his  sorrows,  and  its  hourly  cares  and  anxieties 
were  his. 

One  member  of  the  little  party  that  had  traveled 
with  Lincoln  from  Springfield  to  Washington  was 
young  Elmer  Ellsworth,  who,  when  the  war  broke  out, 
was  made  colonel  of  a  regiment  of  zouaves.  While 
passing  through  Alexandria,  Virginia,  with  his  regi 
ment,  Colonel  Ellsworth  saw  a  Confederate  flag  float 
ing  from  the  roof  of  a  hotel.  Ke  dashed  up  the  stairs 
and,  tearing  the  flag  from  its  staff,  started  back  to  the 
jtreet.  On  the  stairway  he  was  shot  and  killed.  The 
reckless  courage  he  had  shown  and  the  cruelty  of  his 
untimely  death  made  the  men  of  the  North  still  more 
eager  to  fight  for  the  flag  for  whose  honor  Colonel 
Ellsworth  had  died. 

When  the  President  was  aroused  in  the  early  dawn 
and  told  the  news,  he  stood  by  the  window  in  silence 
looking  across  the  Potomac  toward  Alexandria,  while 


A   PEOPLE'S   SORROW  103 

the  tears  streamed  clown  his  face.  Turning  toward  the 
bearers  of  the  heart-breaking  tidings  he  said  slowly : 
"  So  this  is  the  beginning  —  murder  !  Ah,  my  friends, 
what  shall  the  end  be  ?  "  On  the  next  day,  in  the  midst 
of  his  overwhelming  labors,  he  found  time  to  write  with 
his  own  hand  this  letter  to  the  father  and  mother  whose 
boy  had  been  killed :  — 

May  25,  1861. 

MY  DEAR  SIR  AND  MADAM,  —  In  the  untimely  loss  of 
your  noble  son,  our  affliction  here  is  scarcely  less  than  your 
own.  So  much  of  promised  usefulness  to  one's  country,  and 
of  bright  hopes  for  one's  self  and  friends,  have  rarely  been 
so  suddenly  dashed  as  in  his  fall.  In  size,  in  years,  and  in 
youthful  appearance  a  boy  only,  his  power  to  command  men 
was  surpassingly  great.  This  power,  combined  with  a  fine 
intellect,  an  indomitable  energy,  and  a  taste  altogether  mil 
itary,  constituted  in  him,  as  seemed  to  me,  the  best  natural 
talent  in  that  department  I  ever  knew. 

And  yet  he  was  singularly  modest  and  deferential  in  social 
intercourse.  My  acquaintance  with  him  began  less  than  two 
years  ago ;  yet  through  the  latter  half  of  the  intervening 
period  it  was  as  intimate  as  the  disparity  of  our  ages  and  my 
engrossing  engagements  would  permit.  To  me  he  appeared 
to  have  no  indulgences  or  pastimes ;  and  I  never  heard  him 
utter  a  profane  or  an  intemperate  word.  What  was  conclu 
sive  of  his  good  heart,  he  never  forgot  his  parents.  The  honors 
he  labored  for  so  laudably,  and  for  which  in  the  sad  end  he 
so  gallantly  gave  his  life,  he  meant  for  them  no  less  than  for 
himself. 

In  the  hope  that  it  may  be  no  intrusion  upon  the  sacred- 
ness  of  your  sorrow,  I  have  ventured  to  address  you  this 
tribute  to  the  memory  of  my  young  friend  and  your  brave 
and  early  fallen  child. 

May  God  give  you  that  consolation  which  is  beyond  all 
earthly  power. 

Sincerely  your  friend  in  a  common  affliction, 

A.  LINCOLN. 


104  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

This  was  the  first  of  a  great  number  of  personal 
griefs  that  the  war  brought  upon  Lincoln.  A  few 
months  later,  Colonel  Edward  D.  Baker,  the  friend 
who  had  introduced  him  at  the  inauguration,  was  killed 
in  battle  at  Ball's  Bluff.  As  there  came  to  the  Presi 
dent  from  day  to  day  the  news  of  defeat  and  disaster 
on  many  battlefields,  it  found  him  overborne  by  the 
sorrow  of  the  people  and  bearing  the  suffering  of  others 
upon  a  heart  already  heavy  with  its  own  grief.  When 
the  report  of  a  battle  was  looked  for,  he  would  wait  all 
through  the  night  for  news  of  the  outcome,  or  hurry 
through  the  darkness  to  the  telegraph-office  in  the  War 
Department  Building  to  learn  the  news  and  talk  it  over 
with  his  advisers.  To  him  the  report  of  a  battle  was  the 
story  of  so  many  of  his  own  people,  his  friends,  who 
were  suffering  in  his  service.  When  he  heard  of  a  sol 
dier's  death,  he  thought  first  of  what  that  death  meant 
at  home,  and  in  every  way  he  could,  he  tried  to  make 
the  sorrow  of  it  easier  to  bear. 

Most  of  the  soldiers  who  fought  for  the  Union  were 
mere  boys.  Many  of  their  colonels  and  generals  were 
less  than  thirty  years  old.  In  the  heart  of  the  President 
they  were  his  boys  in  blue,  whom  he  loved  as  he  loved 
his  own  Robert  and  Willie  and  Tad ;  and  in  their  hearts 
he  was  the  "  Father  Abraham  "  for  whom  they  prayed, 
and  to  whom  they  sang  their  rallying  song,  "  We  are 
coming,  Father  Abraham." 

He  went  to  the  hospitals  so  often  to  cheer  the 
wounded  that  the  high  officials  thought  he  was  neglect 
ing  the  business  of  his  office.  A  story  is  told  of  hip 
stopping  beside  a  young  soldier's  death-bed  to  writt 
a  last  letter  to  the  father  and  mother  of  the  boy.  At 
the  foot  of  the  brave  little  note  he  added  as  a  sort  of 
comfort  to  the  sufferer,  "  This  letter  was  written  by 


A   PEOPLE'S   SORROW  105 

Abraham  Lincoln,"  and  as  he  turned  to  leave,  asked 
if  he  could  do  anything  more.  The  boy  reached  a 
trembling  hand  toward  him  and  said :  "  I  '11  not  live 
over  an  hour  or  two.  Can't  you  hold  my  hand  until  it 's 
all  over?" 

When  the  army  was  in  camp  in  northern  Virginia, 
he  found  comfort  in  visiting  the  boys  and  watching 
them  drill,  and  when  in  the  fortune  of  war  they  came 
to  the  Washington  hospitals,  wasted  with  disease  or 
broken  with  wounds,  he  visited  them  there  and  brought 
them  the  comfort  of  a  father's  gentle  touch  and  cheer 
ing  word. 

He  wrote  many  letters  of  sympathy  to  friends  and 
sometimes  to  strangers  to  whom  the  war  had  brought 
some  personal  loss.  In  one  of  these  letters  he  said  to 
the  daughter  of  a  friend  who  had  died  :  — 

DEAR  FANNY,  —  In  this  sad  world  of  ours  sorrow  comes 
to  all,  and  to  the  young  it  comes  with  bittered  agony  because 
it  takes  them  unawares.  The  older  have  learned  ever  to  ex 
pect  it.  ...  You  cannot  now  realize  that  you  will  ever  feel 
better.  Is  not  this  so  ?  And  yet  it  is  a  mistake.  You  are 
sure  to  be  happy  again.  To  know  this,  which  is  certainly 
true,  will  make  you  some  less  miserable  now.  I  have  had 
experience  enough  to  know  what  1  say,  and  you  need  only 
to  believe  it  to  feel  better  at  once.  The  memory  of  your 
clear  father,  instead  of  an  agony,  will  yet  be  a  sad,  sweet  feel 
ing  in  your  heart,  of  a  purer  and  holier  sort  than  you  have 
known  before. 

Your  sincere  friend, 

A.  LINCOLN. 

To  a  mother  whose  five  sons  had  died  for  their  coun 
try  he  wrote  this  letter  :  — 

DEAR  MADAM,  —  I  have  been  shown  in  the  files  of  the 
War  Department  a  statement  of  the  Adjutant-General  of 
Massachusetts  that  you  are  the  mother  of  five  sons  who  have 


106  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

died  gloriously  on  the  field  of  battle.  I  feel  how  weak  and 
fruitless  must  be  any  words  of  mine  which  should  attempt 
to  beguile  you  from  the  grief  of  a  loss  so  overwhelming. 
But  I  cannot  refrain  from  tendering  to  you  the  consolation 
that  may  be  found  in  the  thanks  of  the  Republic  they  died 
to  save.  I  pray  that  our  heavenly  Father  may  assuage  the 
anguish  of  your  bereavement,  and  leave  you  only  the  cherished 
memory  of  the  loved  and  lost,  and  the  solemn  pride  that 
must  be  yours  to  have  laid  so  costly  a  sacrifice  upon  the  altar 
of  freedom. 

Yours  very  sincerely  and  respectfully, 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

When,  after  a  year  of  the  horrors  of  war,  death  en 
tered  his  own  household  and  took  his  eight-year-old  boy 
Willie,  his  nature  changed  greatly.  The  lines  of  care 
deepened  about  his  eyes  and  mouth.  In  a  few  months 
he  had  grown  to  be  an  old  man.  He  slept  scarcely  at 
all.  Those  who  saw  him  from  day  to  day  said  that  his 
was  the  saddest  face  they  had  ever  seen.  To  one  of 
his  associates  he  once  said,  "  1  shall  never  be  happy 
again." 


CHAPTER  XVI 

PRESIDENT    LINCOLN    AT   HOME 

IT  would  be  a  mistake  to  believe  that  President 
Lincoln  allowed  sorrow  to  overwhelm  him.  He  had 
learned  through  long*  experience  to  meet  it  with  a  smil 
ing  face.  There  were  times  when  no  one  else  dared  to 
be  either  hopeful  or  happy.  His  stories  and  his  jokes 
were  the  despair  of  his  counselors.  "  Why  can't  the 
President  be  serious?"  they  exclaimed  in  their  impa 
tience.  Because  he  interrupted  a  council  of  state  to 
tell  a  story  or  read  a  page  that  he  thought  funny  from 
"  Artemus  Ward,  His  Book,"  shallow  men  called  him 
heartless.  "  I  tell  you,"  he  said,  "  I  simply  must  do  it. 
If  I  could  not  laugh,  I  should  die.  It  is  my  safety- 
valve." 

Life  in  the  White  House  had  little  privacy.  During 
the  first  three  years  the  conduct  of  the  war  was  directed 
from  there.  In  the  White  House  the  cabinet  held  its 
meetings,  to  agree,  and  quite  as  often  to  disagree,  over 
what  should  be  done.  To  the  White  House  came  letters 
and  telegrams  by  the  thousand,  from  people  in  distress, 
from  applicants  for  office,  from  politicians,  inventors, 
abolitionists,  and  "  cranks."  Men  came  with  schemes 
for  ending  the  war  or  for  enriching  themselves.  Those 
with  grievances  sought  the  President  for  redress.  Fa 
vors  and  privileges  of  all  sorts  were  demanded.  But 
most  of  all,  and  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night,  came 
appeals  for  the  pardon  of  unhappy  soldiers  condemned 
to  death  for  sleeping  on  duty  or  for  running  away  from 
military  service.  The  President  had  given  strict  orders 


108  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

to  turn  no  one  back  who  came  with  appeals  for  a  soldier's 
life ;  and  against  the  protest  of  the  head  of  the  army 
he  granted  innumerable  prayers  of  this  sort,  giving  as 
his  excuse,  "  I  believe  this  boy  can  serve  his  country 
better  living  than  dead." 

Most  of  the  demands  upon  him  were  unnecessary, 
for  people  in  difficulty  naturally  turned  to  him  as  the 
only  person  who  would  hear  them.  One  instance  is 
told  of  a  Kentuckian  who  demanded  the  President's 
help  to  reclaim  a  runaway  slave.  With  such  a  request 
at  such  a  time  Lincoln  had  no  patience.  "  You  remind 
me,"  he  exclaimed,  "of  a  small  boy  on  a  St.  Law 
rence  steamer.  Just  as  they  were  in  the  midst  of  the 
rapids  at  the  most  dangerous  point,  the  boy  rushed 
to  the  pilot  and  said,  4  Say,  Mr.  Captain,  I  wish 
you  would  stop  this  boat ;  I  've  lost  my  apple  over 
board.'  " 

The  President  was  very  fond  of  John  Hay,  his  young 
secretary,  who  lived  in  the  White  House,  and  who  saved 
him  from  many  an  unpleasant  meeting,  and  from  many 
a  wearing  duty.  In  the  long  sleepless  nights  the  Presi 
dent  was  wont  to  court  rest  from  his  anxieties  by  going 
across  the  White  House  in  his  night-clothes  to  sit  on 
the  edge  of  John  Hay's  bed  and  read  to  him  for  hours 
at  a  time  from  Shakespeare's  plays  or  from  the  poems 
of  Holmes  and  Hood  and  Burns. 

The  Lincoln  boys,  eight  and  ten  years  old,  went 
wherever  they  liked  about  the  building,  bursting  into 
the  cabinet-room  while  affairs  of  vast  importance  were 
under  discussion,  and  climbing  over  their  good-natured 
father's  giant  frame  as  if  it  were  their  play-hour  and 
the  austere  Secretary  of  War  and  his  fellow  statesmen 
were  intruders.  Mr.  Hay  has  told  of  the  comradeship 
that  prevailed  between  Lincoln  and  his  two  younger 


LINCOLN  AND  TAD 


PRESIDENT    LINCOLN   AT    HOME        109 

sons.  "  The  two  little  boys,  with  their  Western  inde 
pendence  and  enterprise,  kept  the  house  in  an  uproar. 
They  drove  their  tutor  wild  with  their  good-natured 
disobedience :  they  organized  a  minstrel  show  in  the 
attic  ;  they  made  acquaintance  with  the  office-seekers, 
and  became  the  hot  champions  of  the  distressed.  Tad 
was  a  merry,  warm-blooded,  kindly  little  boy,  perfectly 
lawless,  and  full  of  odd  fancies.  .  .  .  Sometimes,  escap 
ing  from  the  domestic  authorities,  he  would  take  refuge 
in  that  sanctuary  [his  father's  office]  for  the  whole 
evening,  dropping  to  sleep  at  last  on  the  floor,  when  the 
President  would  pick  him  up  and  carry  him  tenderly 
to  bed." 

Once,  when  hope  of  success  for  the  Union  cause 
seemed  far  away,  the  President  issued  a  proclamation 
setting  apart  a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer,  'Mid.  asking 
"  all  the  people  to  abstain  on  that  day  from  their  or 
dinary  secular  pursuits  and  to  unite,  at  their  several 
places  of  worship  and  their  respective  homes,  in  keep 
ing  the  day  holy  to  the  Lord."  When  little  Tad  Lin 
coln  was  told  that  this  meant  going  without  food  for  a 
whole  day,  he  began  to  be  afraid  that  he  might  starve. 
For  some  days  before  the  fast-day,  and  with  the  utniosfc 
secrecy,  he  busied  himself  with  hiding  in  the  carriage- 
house  scraps  of  food  from  the  table  and  the  kitchen. 
The  discovery  of  his  storehouse  of  provisions  enraged 
the  small  boy,  but  amused  his  father  greatly.  "  If  he 
grows  to  be  a  man,"  the  President  said  with  a  laugh, 
44  Tad  will  be  what  the  women  all  dote  on  —  a  good 
provider." 

One  of  the  President's  secretaries  has  described  the 
part  Tad  took  in  one  of  his  father's  White  House 
speeches.  "  From  a  point  of  concealment  behind  the 
window  drapery,  I  held  a  light  while  he  read,  drop- 


110  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ping  the  pages  of  Lis  written  speech,  one  by  one,  upon 
the  floor  as  he  finished  them.  Little  Tad  .  .  .  scram 
bled  around  on  the  floor,  importuning  his  father  to 
give  him  l  another  paper,'  as  he  collected  the  sheets  of 
paper  fluttering  from  the  President's  hand.  Outside 
was  a  vast  sea  of  faces,  illuminated  by  the  lights  that 
burned  in  the  festal  array  of  the  White  House,  and 
stretching  far  out  into  the  misty  darkness." 

On  another  occasion,  when  Secretary  Stanton  play 
fully  made  Tad  a  lieutenant  in  the  army,  Tad  threw 
the  White  House  into  an  uproar  by  assuming  full 
military  authority.  He  had  a  lot  of  firearms  sent  over, 
discharged  the  guard,  mustered  all  the  house-servants, 
drilled  them  with  the  muskets,  and  put  them  on  guard. 
When  the  confusion  he  had  created  was  reported  to 
President  Lincoln,  he  treated  it  as  a  joke,  sent  Tad 
to  bed,  and  then  relieved  the  novel  guardsmen  from 
duty. 

The  Lincoln  children's  dogs  and  cats  and  goats 
seemed  to  get  their  share  of  the  busy  President's 
thoughts.  When  there  were  new  puppies  or  kittens  in 
the  family,  he  announced  it  in  all  seriousness  to  his 
visitors.  When  Tad  was  away  with  his  mother,  tele 
grams  kept  the  boy  posted  as  to  the  welfare  of  his 
pets.  In  one  of  these  dispatches  the  President  said, 
"  Tell  Tad  the  goats  and  father  are  very  well,  espe 
cially  the  goats."  In  one  of  his  letters  to  Mrs.  Lin 
coln  he  wrote  :  "  Tell  dear  Tad  poor  4  Nanny  goat '  is 
lost  and  Mrs.  Cuthbert  and  I  are  in  distress  about  it. 
T'le  day  you  left,  Nanny  was  found  resting  herself  and 
chewing  her  little  cud  on  the  middle  of  Tad's  bed ; 
but  now  she  's  gone.  The  gardener  kept  complaining 
that  she  destroyed  the  flowers,  till  it  was  concluded  to 
bring  her  down  to  the  White  House.  .  .  .  The  second 


PRESIDENT  LINCOLN   AT    HOME        111 

day  she  disappeared  and  has  not  been  heard  of  since. 
This  is  the  last  we  know  of  poor  Nanny."  In  a  later 
dispatch  he  telegraphed  his  wife,  "  All  well,  includ 
ing  Tad's  pony  and  the  goats." 

Once  in  a  while  the  boys  would  succeed  in  enticing 
their  father  into  the  grounds,  where  they  would  play 
ball  with  him,  and  in  high  glee  keep  him  running  the 
bases  with  his  giant  strides.  For  the  children  he  was 
willing  to  do  anything. 

A  boy  of  thirteen  had  displayed  unusual  courage 
in  the  gunboat  service  and  sought  the  President's  help 
in  getting  into  the  Naval  Academy.  He  bowed  to  the 
President  and  began  to  tell  his  story  when  he  was 
interrupted  by  Mr.  Lincoln's  hearty,  "  Bless  me ! 
is  that  the  boy  who  did  so  gallantly  in  those  two 
great  battles?  Why,  I  feel  that  I  should  bow  to  him 
and  not  he  to  me."  When  the  President  found  the 
boy  was  a  few  months  too  young  to  have  his  wish, 
he  put  his  hand  affectionately  on  his  shoulder  and 
said  to  him :  "  Now,  my  boy,  go  home  and  have  good 
fun  until  fall.  It  is  about  the  last  holiday  you  will 
get." 

Another  boy  of  thirteen  had  been  a  drummer  and 
had  lost  his  place  because  he  had  offended  his  colonel. 
Sick  and  disheartened,  he  was  waiting  to  see  if  the 
President  would  not  give  him  another  chance.  Lincoln 
asked  him  where  he  lived  and  who  his  parents  were. 
"  I  have  no  mother,  no  father,  no  brothers,  no  sisters, 
and  no  friends — nobody  cares  for  me."  The  Presi 
dent  wrote  on  a  card  an  order  "  to  care  for  this  poor 
boy,"  and  sent  him  away  happy. 

Through  all  the  years,  with  the  wisdom  and  foresight 
of  a  statesman,  he  had  kept  the  childlike  spirit.  The 
little  children,  who  knew  nothing  of  his  trials,  came  to 


112  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

him  for  help  and  comfort  as  freely  as  if  he  belonged  to 
them. 

In  the  crowds  that  hung  about  the  doorway  of  his 
private  office  the  woman  who  brought  a  baby  with  her 
always  managed  to  get  a  hearing.  The  little  folk  who 
attended  his  receptions  he  singled  out  for  some  special 
word  of  kindness,  stopping  the  rapidly  moving  proces 
sion  until  he  could  take  a  baby  into  his  arms,  or  "  shake 
hands  with  this  little  man."  A  boy  of  seven,  who  was 
brought  to  the  White  House  and  introduced  to  Mr. 
Lincoln  as  the  son  of  one  of  the  great  Union  generals, 
remembers  with  what  tenderness  the  tall  President 
laid  a  tired  hand  on  his  head  as  he  said :  "  My  boy,  I 
hope  you  will  live  to  be  as  good  a  man  as  I  know  your 
father  is." 

At  one  of  the  big  receptions  three  timid  little  girls 
followed  the  long  line  of  visitors  to  where  Mr.  Lincoln 
stood,  and  then  suddenly  lost  their  courage.  The  Presi 
dent  noticed  them  and  called  out,  "  Little  girls,  are  you 
going  to  pass  me  without  shaking  hands  ?  " 

To  one  of  the  youngsters  at  Springfield  whose  state 
ment  that  he  had  talked  to  Abraham  Lincoln  had  been 
disputed,  the  President  found  time  to  write :  — 

EXECUTIVE  MANSION,  March  19,  1861. 

Whom  it  may  concern :  I  did  see  and  talk  with  George 
Evans  Patten,  last  May,  at  Springfield,  Illinois. 

Respectfully, 

A.  LINCOLN. 

This  interest  in  the  happiness  of  children  Abraham 
Lincoln  had  always  shown.  He  did  not  hesitate  to 
sacrifice  the  dignity  of  his  high  place  and  the  comfort 
and  convenience  of  a  very  busy  man  to  give  pleasure  to 
any  child  that  needed  him. 


PRESIDENT   LINCOLN    AT    HOME         113 

In  the  old  days,  when  Lincoln  was  one  of  the  lead 
ing  lawyers  of  the  State,  he  noticed  a  little  girl  of 
ten  who  stood  beside  a  trunk  in  front  of  her  home  cry 
ing  bitterly.  He  stopped  to  learn  what  was  wrong,  and 
was  told  that  she  was  about  to  miss  a  long-promised 
visit  to  Decatur  because  the  wagon  had  not  come  for 
her.  "  You  need  n't  let  that  trouble  you,"  was  his  cheer 
ing  reply.  "  Just  come  along  with  me  and  we  shall 
make  it  all  right."  Lifting  the  trunk  upon  his  shoulder, 
and  taking  the  little  girl  by  the  hand,  he  went  through 
the  streets  of  Springfield  a  half-mile  to  the  railway 
station,  put  her  and  her  trunk  on  the  train,  and  sent 
her  away  with  a  happiness  in  her  heart  that  is  still 
there. 

George  Pickett,  who  had  known  Lincoln  in  Illinois, 
years  before,  joined  the  Southern  army  and  by  his 
conspicuous  bravery  and  ability  had  become  one  of 
the  great  generals  of  the  Confederacy.  Toward  the 
close  of  the  war,  when  a  large  part  of  Virginia  had 
fallen  into  the  possession  of  the  Union  army,  the 
President  called  at  General  Pickett's  Virginia  home. 
The  general's  wife,  with  her  baby  on  her  arm,  met  him 
at  the  door.  She  herself  has  told  the  story  for  us. 
" 4  Is  this  George  Pickett's  home  ? '  he  asked.  With 
all  the  courage  and  dignity  I  could  muster  I  replied, 
4  Yes,  and  I  am  his  wife  and  this  is  his  baby.'  4 1  am 
Abraham  Lincoln.'  4  The  President ! '  I  gasped.  I  had 
never  seen  him,  but  I  knew  the  intense  love  and  rev 
erence  with  which  my  soldier  always  spoke  of  him. 
The  stranger  shook  his  head  and  replied,  4  No ;  Abra 
ham  Lincoln,  George's  old  friend.'  The  baby  pushed 
away  from  me  and  reached  out  his  hands  to  Mr.  Lin 
coln,  who  took  him  in  his  arms.  As  he  did  so  an  ex 
pression  of  rapt,  almost  divine  tenderness  and  love 


114  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

lighted  up  the  sad  face.  It  was  a  look  that  I  have  never 
seen  on  any  other  face.  The  baby  opened  his  mouth 
wide  and  insisted  upon  giving  his  father's  friend  a 
dewy  kiss.  As  Mr.  Lincoln  gave  the  little  one  back  to 
me  he  said,  4  Tell  your  father,  the  rascal,  that  I  forgive 
him  for  the  sake  of  your  bright  eyes.' " 


CHAPTER  XVII 

HIGH    TIDE 

IisT  the  earlier  years  of  Lincoln's  life  he  believed  that 
fate  directed  the  affairs  of  men  and  determined  their 
success  or  failure  for  them.  But  as  he  grew  older,  he 
came  to  feel  that  Providence  had  intrusted  to  him  a 
great  duty  toward  mankind,  and  that  in  some  way,  thus 
far  undiscovered,  he  was  to  have  a  part  in  bringing 
freedom  to  the  slaves.  In  the  campaigns  with  Douglas, 
ambitious  though  he  was,  he  found  himself  less  inter 
ested  in  his  own  personal  success  than  he  was  in  bring 
ing  the  people  to  see  the  wickedness  of  slavery.  When 
he  came  to  the  presidency  it  was  with  a  feeling  that 
it  was  God  who  had  put  upon  him  the  burden  of  sav 
ing  the  Union,  and  that  the  efforts  of  men  and,  least 
of  all,  his  own  efforts,  had  little  to  do  with  the  results. 
To  his  mind  the  contest  with  slavery,  and,  later  on, 
the  war  to  save  the  Union,  were  a  single  death-struggle 
between  right  and  wrong,  in  which  he  was  chosen  to 
execute  God's  will  in  God's  own  good  time.  It  was  for 
this  reason  that  he  gave  no  thought  to  his  own  safety, 
traveling  unprotected  except  when  Secretary  Stanton 
forced  a  guard  upon  him,  and  when  he  made  his  visits 
to  the  front,  walking  unconcernedly  within  easy  range 
of  the  Confederate  guns.  It  was  his  faith  that  God 
would  use  him  as  long  as  he  was  needed,  and  would  let 
him  die  whenever  his  work  was  finished. 

This  attitude  toward  Providence  he  wrote  down,  in 
the  fall  of  1862,  when  there  seemed  to  be  no  hope  that 
would  come  to  an  early  end  :  "  The  will  of  God 


116  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

prevails.  In  great  contests  each  party  claims  to  act  in 
accordance  with  the  will  of  God.  Both  may  be,  and  one 
must  be,  wrong.  God  cannot  be  for  and  against  the 
same  thing  at  the  same  time.  In  the  present  Civil  War 
it  is  quite  possible  that  God's  purpose  is  something  dif 
ferent  from  the  purpose  of  either  party ;  and  yet  the 
human  instrumentalities,  working  just  as  they  do,  are 
of  the  best  adaptation  to  effect  his  purpose.  I  am  almost 
ready  to  say  that  this  is  probably  true  ;  that  God  wills* 
this  contest  and  wills  that  it  shall  not  end  yet.  By  His 
mere  great  power  on  the  minds  of  the  now  contestants 
He  could  have  either  saved  or  destroyed  the  Union 
without  a  human  contest.  Yet  the  contest  began.  And, 
having  begun,  He  could  give  the  final  victory  to  either 
side  any  day.  Yet  the  contest  proceeds." 

During  1861  and  1862  the  loyal  States  stood  by 
him  faithfully,  sending  troops  by  hundreds  of  thou 
sands  as  rapidly  as  he  called  for  them.  Upon  the  ques 
tion  of  freeing  the  slaves  they  continued  to  disagree. 
The  war  was  a  war  to  preserve  the  Union  ;  upon  that 
all  could  stand  together,  Kentucky  and  Maryland  and 
Missouri,  as  well  as  the  free  States  of  the  North.  But 
in  the  background  the  problem  of  what  to  do  with 
the  slaves  loomed  large.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of 
negroes  in  the  South  were  helping  the  enemies  of  the 
Union,  supporting  the  families  of  the  soldiers  in  rebel 
lion  while  their  masters  fought,  and  digging  the  trenches 
and  building  the  fortifications  to  enable  their  masters 
to  prolong  the  war.  The  time  was  rapidly  approaching 
when  this  use  of  the  slaves  must  be  stopped.  If  only 
the  President  would  set  them  free,  men  said,  the  end 
would  soon  come.  But  emancipation  could  not  come  so 
long  as  it  would  offend  the  loyal  border  States.  Day 
by  day  the  anti-slavery  feeling  grew  stronger  in  the 


HIGH   TIDE  117 

North,  and  day  after  day  abolition  committees  and  del 
egations  waited  on  the  President  to  urge  him  to  act. 
At  the  same  time  other  loyal  people  just  as  earnestly 
warned  him  of  the  mischief  that  such  a  step  would 
work. 

The  President  found  a  strong  reason  for  emanci 
pation  in  the  effect  it  would  have  upon  the  feeling  of 
England,  for  with  all  their  sympathy  with  the  South, 
the  English  were  distinctly  hostile  to  slavery.  Lincoln 
knew  that  if  ever  the  success  of  the  South  came  to 
mean  the  perpetuation  of  slavery,  English  sympathy 
would  shift  toward  the  Union  side. 

During  the  summer  of  1862,  it  became  plain  that 
emancipation  could  not  be  put  off  much  longer.  The 
military  necessity  of  taking  from  the  enemy  the  power 
to  use  negro  labor  in  aid  of  the  rebellion  became  more 
and  more  evident,  even  to  the  loyal  people  on  the  bor 
der.  Lincoln,  having  made  up  his  mind  to  free  the 
slaves,  kept  his  own  counsel,  waiting  for  the  fit  time  to 
come,  and  bearing  in  silence  the  criticism  of  the  anti- 
slavery  people. 

To  Horace  Greeley,  editor  of  the  New  York  Tribune, 
who,  under  the  title,  "  The  Prayer  of  Twenty  Millions," 
had  printed  a  savage  attack  on  him  for  delaying  to  free 
the  slaves,  he  wrote :  "  I  would  save  the  Union.  I 
would  save  it  the  shortest  way  under  the  Constitution. 
...  If  I  could  save  the  Union  without  freeing  any 
slave,  I  would  do  it ;  and  if  I  could  save  it  by  freeing 
all  the  slaves,  I  would  do  it ;  and  if  I  could  save  it  by 
freeing  some  and  leaving  others  alone,  I  would  also  do 
that.  ...  I  have  here  stated  my  purpose  according 
to  my  view  of  official  duty ;  and  I  intend  no  modifi 
cation  of  my  oft-expressed  personal  wish  that  all  men 
everywhere  could  be  free." 


118  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

This  is  the  answer  he  made  to  a  committee  of  church 
people  who  came  to  him  to  urge  him  to  act :  "  I  am 
approached  with  the  most  opposite  opinions  and  advice, 
and  that  by  religious  men  who  are  equally  certain  that 
they  represent  the  divine  will.  ...  I  hope  it  will  not 
be  irreverent  for  me  to  say  that  if  it  is  probable  that 
God  would  reveal  His  will  to  others  on  a  point  so  con 
nected  with  my  duty,  it  might  be  supposed  He  would 
reveal  it  directly  to  me  ;  for,  unless  I  am  more  deceived 
in  myself  than  I  often  am,  it  is  my  earnest  desire  to 
know  the  will  of  Providence  in  this  matter.  And  if  I 
can  learn  what  it  is,  I  will  do  it." 

Meanwhile  he  had  made  his  decision.  He  went  into 
the  cabinet  meeting  one  July  afternoon  with  a  volume 
of  Artemus  Ward  in  his  hand  and  commenced  the 
deliberations  by  reading  aloud  a  page  of  flippant  non 
sense  that  angered  Secretary  Stanton  and  seemed  to 
the  rest  to  be  inexcusably  out  of  place.  Becoming  sud 
denly  serious,  he  said :  "  When  the  rebel  army  was  at 
Frederick,  I  determined  as  soon  as  it  should  be  driven 
out  of  Maryland  to  issue  a  proclamation  of  emancipa 
tion.  I  said  nothing  to  any  one :  but  I  made  the  pro 
mise  to  myself,  and  "  —  hesitating  for  a  moment  —  "to 
my  Maker.  The  rebel  army  is  now  driven  out  and  I 
am  going  to  fulfill  that  promise." 

In  September  there  came  a  Union  victory  in  the  bat 
tle  of  Antietam,  and  at  once  the  Emancipation  Procla 
mation  was  published,  giving  freedom  to  all  who  should 
be  slaves  within  the  enemy's  country  on  January  1, 
1 863.  The  proclamation  closed  with  this  prayer :  "And 
upon  this  act,  sincerely  believed  to  be  an  act  of  justice 
warranted  by  the  Constitution,  upon  military  necessity, 
I  invoke  the  considerate  judgment  of  mankind  and  the 
gracious  favor  of  Almighty  God." 


HIGH   TIDE  119 

No  sooner  were  the  slaves  in  the  Confederate  States 
set  free  than  it  became  necessary  to  organize  negro 
regiments.  Many  in  the  North  who  had  been  slow  to 
approve  of  emancipation  opposed  the  arming  of  the 
black  men.  The  feeling  against  it  ran  high  in  the  North, 
while  in  the  South,  President  Davis  and  the  Confeder 
ate  Congress  threatened  the  officers  of  negro  regiments 
with  death.  To  a  Union  mass  meeting,  held  at  Spring 
field,  Illinois,  in  August,  1863,  the  President  sent  a 
letter  in  which  he  explained  the  necessity  for  freeing 
the  slaves  and  employing  them  as  soldiers.  "  Peace," 
he  wrote,  "  does  not  appear  so  distant  as  it  did.  I 
hope  it  will  come  soon,  and  come  to  stay  ;  and  so  come 
as  to  be  worth  the  keeping  in  all  future  time.  It  will 
then  have  been  proved  that  among  freemen  there  can 
be  no  successful  appeal  from  the  ballot  to  the  bullet, 
and  that  they  who  take  such  appeal  are  sure  to  lose 
their  case  and  pay  the  cost.  And  then  there  will  be 
some  black  men  who  can  remember  that  with  silent 
tongue,  and  clenched  teeth,  and  steady  eye,  and  well- 
poised  bay  one  t>  they -have  helped  mankind  on  to  this 
great  consummation,  while  I  fear  there  will  be  some 
white  ones  unable  to  forget  that  with  malignant  heart 
and  deceitful  speech  they  strove  to  hinder  it." 

On  July  4,  1863,  the  tide  of  war  began  to  turn. 
The  Union  armies  under  General  Grant,  with  the 
help  of  Farragut  and  Porter  and  their  boats,  cap 
tured  Vicksburg  and  opened  the  Mississippi,  sepa 
rating  Louisiana  and  Arkansas  and  Texas  from  the 
Confederacy,  and  Lincoln  announced,  "  The  Father  of 
Waters  again  goes  unvexed  to  the  sea."  On  the 
same  day,  at  Gettysburg,  in  southern  Pennsylvania, 
General  Lee  and  his  army,  who  had  marched  into 
the  North,  were  turned  back  toward  Richmond.  The 


120  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

free  States  never  again  echoed  the  tread  of  hostile 
armies. 

At  the  battle  of  Gettysburg,  which  lasted  for  three 
days,  there  had  been  killed,  wounded,  or  missing  over 
forty-three  thousand  men,  the  Union  losses  being  greater 
than  the  Confederate.  The  battle-ground  where  the 
soldiers  had  been  buried,  almost  as  they  fell,  was  set 
apart  at  once  as  a  national  cemetery.  On  November 
19,  1863,  the  dedication  took  place.  Edward  Everett 
delivered  the  oration.  To  Abraham  Lincoln  an  invita 
tion  had  been  given  to  "  set  apart  these  grounds  to 
their  sacred  use  by  a  few  appropriate  remarks."  The 
President  came  by  train  the  day  before.  The  speech 
was  half  written,  and  in  his  bedroom  at  Gettysburg  he 
wrote  the  rest  in  pencil.  A  hundred  thousand  people 
had  assembled  in  the  cemetery,  toward  which  in  the 
morning  the  great  procession  moved  slowly  forward. 
Lincoln  rode  his  horse  with  a  dignity  befitting  the 
commander-in-chief  of  the  nation's  army.  Mr.  Ever 
ett's  address  held  the  audience  profoundly  attentive 
from  noon  until  two  o'clock.  A-b*mi**am*&rem*m*g 


"  We  trust,  O  God,  Thy  gracious  power 
To  aid  us  in  our  darkest  hour. 
This  be  our  prayer,  —  Fattier,  save 
A  people's  freedom  from  its  grave. 
All  praise  to  Thee  !  " 

As  the  last  words  of  if*  hymn,  sung  by  a  Baltimore 
chorus  of  a  hundred  voices,  died  away,  Lincoln  stepped 
forth  with  the  sheets  containing  the  little  speech  in 
his  left  hand.  He  spoke  slowly,  in  a  voice  that,  like  the 
notes  of  a  bugle,  reached  the  farthest  borders  of  the 
crowd^There  was  tenderness  in  the  words  :  "  The  brave 
men,  living  and  dead,  who  struggled  here,  have  conse- 


HIGH   TIDE  121 

crated  it  far  above  our  poor  power  to  add  or  detract. 
The  world  will  little  note  nor  long  remember  what  we 
say  here,  but  it  can  never  forget  what  they  did  here." 
As  he  continued,  "  It  is  for  us,  the  living,  rather  to 
be  dedicated  here  to  the  unfinished  work  which  they 
who  fought  here  have  thus  far  so  nobly  advanced," 
it  was  plain  that  the  people  to  whose  loyalty  he  had 
always  trusted  would  prove  faithful  to  the  cause  for 
which  the  honored  dead  had  given  "  the  last  full  mea 
sure  of  devotion." 

The  next  summer  peace  seemed  farther  away  than 
ever.  The  battle-line  crept  once  more  dangerously  near 
to  free  territory.  Impatient  men,  weary  of  Lincoln's 
caution,  began  to  look  about  for  some  one  for  Presi 
dent  who  would  drive  the  armies  unprepared  to  their 
destruction,  while  others,  weary  of  the  daily  record 
of  disaster,  were  in  search  of  a  candidate  who  would 
consent  to  a  peace  that  meant  disunion. 

A  mass  convention  of  all  the  dissatisfied  Union  men 
was  held  at  Cleveland,  Ohio,  to  denounce  the  Presi 
dent's  "imbecile  policy  in  the  conduct  of  the  war," 
and  nominate  John  C.  Fremont  to  succeed  him.  In 
stead  of  being  a  representative  gathering  of  thousands 
of  loyal  citizens,  it  brought  together  only  a  few  disap 
pointed  politicians  and  personal  enemies  of  Mr.  Lin 
coln.  To  the  President  came  a  report  of  the  affair  as 
he  sat  with  a  group  of  friends  at  the  White  House. 
14  How  many  people  were  at  the  meeting  ?  "  he  asked. 
"About  four  hundred,"  was  the  answer.  He  reached 
for  the  Bible  that  lay  on  his  desk,  and,  turning  to  the 
first  book  of  Samuel  and  the  twenty-second  chapter, 
read  aloud :  "  And  every  one  that  was  in  distress,  and 
every  one  that  was  in  debt,  and  every  one  that  was  dis 
contented,  gathered  themselves  unto  him ;  and  he  be^ 


122  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

came  a  captain  over  them :  and  there  were  with  him 
about  four  hundred  men." 

The  Republicans  made  no  nomination  in  1864,  but 
the  Union  party,  as  it  called  itself,  met  at  Baltimore 
and  nominated  Abraham  Lincoln  for  President  and 
Andrew  Johnson  of  Tennessee  for  Vice-President. 
Many  of  the  Democrats  supported  the  Union  ticket. 
The  others  nominated  George  B.  McClellan  for  Pre 
sident. 

In  the  fall,  as  the  campaign  went  on,  the  Union 
began  to  win  victories  by  sea  and  by  land.  Admiral 
Farragut  captured  Mobile,  and  Sherman  took  Atlanta. 
The  effect  on  the  campaign  was  stimulating.  To  use 
Lincoln's  homely  words,  the  people  became  convinced 
that  "  it  would  not  do  to  swap  horses  while  they  were 
crossing  the  stream,"  and  by  a  tremendous  vote  —  212 
to  21  —  reflected  Abraham  Lincoln.  He  was  serenaded, 
the  night  after  the  election,  and  in  his  response  said : 
"The  rebellion  continues,  and  now  that  the  election  i& 
over,  may  not  all  having  a  common  interest  reunite  in 
a  common  effort  to  save  our  common  country  ?  For  my 
own  part,  I  have  striven  and  shall  strive  to  avoid  plac 
ing  any  obstacle  in  the  way.  So  long  as  I  have  been 
here  I  have  not  willingly  planted  a  thorn  in  any  man's 
bosom.  While  I  am  deeply  sensible  to  the  high  com 
pliment  of  a  reelection,  and  duly  grateful,  as  I  trust,  to 
Almighty  God  for  having  directed  my  countrymen 
to  a  right  conclusion,  as  I  think,  for  their  own  good, 
it  adds  nothing  to  my  satisfaction  that  any  other  man 
may  be  disappointed  or  pained  by  the  result." 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

PEACE 

THE  reelection  of  Lincoln  proved  that  the  only  way 
to  peace,  to  a  peace  that  would  "come  to  stay"  and  be 
"  worth  the  keeping  in  all  future  time,"  was  to  fight  it 
out.  To  the  Confederate  army  it  gave  the  courage  of 
despair,  a  courage  that  enabled  brave  men  to  die  for  a 
cause  already  lost ;  to  the  Union  soldiers  it  gave  a  con 
fidence  that  made  success  secure.  It  was  plain  that  the 
armies  under  Lee  in  Virginia  and  under  Johnston  in 
the  Carolinas  were  struggling  to  put  off  the  inevitable 
end.  The  opening  of  the  Mississippi  River,  in  1863, 
had  cut  the  South  in  two  and  put  the  Western  States 
out  of  the  contest.  From  the  Tennessee  River,  General 
Sherman  had  fought  his  bloody  way  into  the  heart 
of  Georgia  and  was  now  leading  his  victorious  army 
"  from  Atlanta  to  the  sea,"  thus  separating  the  Gulf 
States  from  what  was  left  of  the  Confederacy.  Mean 
while  Grant  was  driving  Lee,  inch  by  inch,  by  "  the 
road  of  death,"  back  from  the  Potomac  and  into  the 
devastated  South.  The  Confederacy  was  at  bay.  The 
end  was  in  sight. 

On  March  4,  1865,  standing  where,  four  years  be 
fore,  he  had  sworn  "  to  preserve,  protect,  and  defend 
the  Constitution,"  President  Lincoln  was  inaugurated 
a  second  time.  The  four  years  of  war  had  wrought 
great  changes  in  the  people  and  in  the  man.  No  mili 
tary  escort  was  needed  this  time  to  bring  him  to  the 
Capitol,  for  he  was  now  among  friends.  With  little 
Tad  beside  him,  he  drove  rapidly  from  the  White  House 


124  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

to  the  ceremony.  In  the  parade  and  in  the  audience, 
for  the  first  time  in  American  history,  a  multitude  of 
negroes,  soldiers  and  civilians  whom  he  had  set  free, 
were  gathered  to  do  him  honor.  The  President,  hag 
gard  and  worn,  stood  before  the  people.  He  was  sad 
dened  by  his  own  cares  and  borne  down  by  the  burden 
of  the  nation's  grief.  He  might  have  said,  as  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  did,  "  I  am  surrounded  by  those  who 
are  sorrowing  almost  unto  death." 

As  he  arose,  a  deep  silence  fell  upon  the  people.  It 
was  as  if  a  prophet  of  the  elder  day  were  speaking 
the  word  of  inspiration  to  the  nation  that  his  faith  had 
saved.  The  sky  had  been  overcast,  but  suddenly  a 
burst  of  sunshine  brought  the  giant  figure  into  a  glare 
of  light,  thrilling  the  speaker  and  giving  to  the  people, 
as  he  thought,  an  omen  of  the  triumph  that  was  so 
near  at  hand. 

44  The  Almighty  has  his  own  purposes,"  he  declared. 
44  4  Woe  unto  the  world  because  of  offenses  !  for  it  must 
needs  be  that  offenses  come ;  but  woe  to  that  man  by 
whom  the  offense  cometh.'  If  we  shall  suppose  that 
American  slavery  is  one  of  those  offenses  which,  in  the 
providence  of  God,  must  needs  come,  but  which,  having 
continued  through  His  appointed  time,  He  now  wills  to 
remove,  and  that  He  gives  to  both  North  and  South 
this  terrible  war,  as  the  woe  due  to  those  by  whom  the 
offense  came,  shall  we  discern  therein  any  departure 
from  those  divine  attributes  which  the  believers  in  a 
living  God  always  ascribed  to  Him?  Fondly  do  we 
hope  —  fervently  do  we  pray  —  that  this  mighty 
scourge  of  war  may  speedily  pass  away.  Yet,  if  God 
wills  that  it  continue  until  all  the  wealth  piled  by  the 
bondsman's  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  unrequited 
toil  shall  be  sunk,  and  until  every  drop  of  blood  drawn 


II 


2  I 

!J 


PEACE  125 

with  the  lash  shall  be  paid  by  another  drawn  with  the 
sword,  as  was  said  three  thousand  years  ago,  so  still  it 
must  be  said,  '  The  judgments  of  the  Lord  are  true 
and  righteous  altogether.' 

"  With  malice  toward  none ;  with  charity  for  all ; 
with  firmness  in  the  right,  as  God  gives  us  to  see  the 
right,  let  us  strive  on  to  finish  the  work  we  are  in  ; 
to  bind  up  the  nation's  wounds ;  to  care  for  him  who 
shall  have  borne  the  battle,  and  for  his  widow,  and 
his  orphan  —  to  do  all  which  may  achieve  and  cherish 
a  just  and  lasting  peace  among  ourselves,  and  with  all 
nations." 

The  change  that  the  years  of  war  had  made  in  the 
President  was  noted  by  every  one.  "  When  I  last  saw 
him,"  Horace  Greeley  tells  us,  "  I  was  struck  by  his 
haggard,  care-fraught  face,  so  different  from  the  sunny, 
gladsome  countenance  he  first  brought  from  Illinois. 
I  felt  that  his  life  hung  by  so  slender  a  thread  that 
any  new  access  of  trouble  or  excess  of  effort  might 
suddenly  close  his  career.  .  .  .  4  The  sunset  of  life '  was 
plainly  looking  out  of  his  kindly  eyes  and  gleaming 
from  his  weather-beaten  visage." 

The  weeks  that  followed  brought  no  little  happiness 
to  the  President.  The  Thirteenth  Amendment  passed 
Congress  and  was  in  a  fair  way  to  become  a  part  of 
the  Constitution.  By  it  liberty  was  given  to  the  slaves 
in  the  loyal  States,  as,  by  the  President's  Emancipa 
tion  Proclamation,  liberty  had  already  been  given  to 
the  slaves  within  Confederate  territory.  The  President 
took  every  opportunity  to  help  in  the  adoption  of  this 
amendment. 

Late  in  March  he  took  Tad  with  him  to  City  Point 
in  Virginia,  where,  as  General  Grant's  guest,  he  could 
watch  the  movement  of  the  armies.  The  last  days  of 


126  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  struggle  were  no  holiday  for  the  tender-hearted 
President.  As  the  news  came,  from  hour  to  hour,  of 
Lee's  retreat  and  of  the  capture  of  Confederate  pris 
oners  by  thousands,  he  sent  messages  of  joy  to  Wash 
ington,  while  the  reports  of  men  wounded  and  men 
killed  on  either  side  deepened  the  lines  of  sadness  in 
his  face.  He  knew  that,  as  in  surgery,  the  most  mer 
ciful  way  to  peace  was  to  bring  it  quickly  by  sharp  and 
decisive  action.  So  when  General  Sheridan  reported 
that,  if  the  thing  were  pressed,  he  thought  General  Lee 
would  surrender,  he  set  himself  grimly  to  the  inevitable 
and  telegraphed  to  Grant,  "  Let  the  thing  be  pressed." 

During  the  President's  stay  at  City  Point,  Jefferson 
Davis  and  the  Confederate  officials  gathere.d  their 
papers  together,  left  Richmond  by  night,  and  sought 
safety  farther  south.  As  they  left,  followed  by  all  who 
were  able  to  crowd  into  the  railway  coaches,  some  one 
set  fire  to  the  city,  making  the  place  even  more  deso 
late  than  war  had  made  it.  Lee  had  only  a  few  more 
days  to  fight  and  the  end  was  at  hand. 

Without  military  protection  Lincoln  led  little  Tad 
by  the  hand  into  the  abandoned  capital  of  the  dying 
Confederacy.  No  triumphal  entry  like  this  is  told  in 
history.  The  negroes,  free  at  last  by  his  hand  and  by 
the  ratification  of  war,  crowded  about  him  as  he  walked 
through  their  midst.  Many  proclaimed  him  "the  great 
Messiah,"  and  falling  to  the  ground  before  him,  tried 
to  kiss  his  feet.  It  was  a  strange  experience  to  this 
simple-minded  man.  "  Don't  kneel  to  me,"  he  said. 
"  That  is  not  right.  You  must  kneel  to  God  only,  and 
thank  Him  for  the  liberty  you  will  hereafter  enjoy." 
But  from  their  tender  gratitude  he  was  unable  to 
escape.  Barefooted,  in  the  garb  of  slavery,  they  pur 
sued  him  eagerly,  singing  hymns  of  worship  in  which 


PEACE  127 

"  Massa  Lincoln  "  bore  quite  as  great  a  part  as  did 
the  Lord  of  Hosts.  Finally,  he  made  them  a  speech: 
"  My  poor  friends,  you  are  free  —  free  as  air.  Liberty 
is  your  birthright.  But  you  must  try  to  deserve  it. 
.  .  .  Learn  the  laws  and  obey  them ;  obey  God's 
commandments  and  thank  Him  for  giving  you  liberty, 
for  to  Him  you  owe  all  things." 

An  accident  to  Secretary  Seward  called  Lincoln  to 
Washington  earlier  than  he  had  wished.  On  Saturday, 
the  8th  of  April,  he  left  City  Point  by  boat,  by  way  of 
the  Potomac,  for  Washington.  Confident  that  within 
a  few  hours  the  surrender  of  General  Lee  would  bring 
the  peace  for  which  he  had  so  long  prayed,  he  was  able 
for  a  time  to  forget  the  cares  of  state  as  he  read  aloud 
from  the  tragedy  of  Macbeth. 

Many  were  now  beginning  to  abandon  the  Confed 
erate  cause.  In  Richmond,  during  the  President's  brief 
stay,  a  movement  had  been  started,  with  his  help,  for 
the  withdrawal  of  the  Virginia  troops  from  the  Con 
federate  army  and  the  repeal  of  Virginia's  ordinance 
of  secession.  But  it  came  to  nothing. 

The  prospect  of  an  immediate  end  to  the  war  brought 
the  President  and  Congress  face  to  face  with  the  grav 
est  political  questions  the  country  has  ever  had  to  solve. 
How  should  the  Union  be  restored?  Should  Jefferson 
Davis  and  his  associates  be  arrested  and  punished  for 
treason,  or  should  they  be  received  into  citizenship,  to 
take  part  again  in  the  administration  of  a  government 
they  had  sought  to  destroy  ?  Should  the  policy  toward 
the  leaders  in  the  rebellion  be  one  of  revenge,  of  pun 
ishment,  or  of  pardon  ?  Northern  sentiment  was  di 
vided.  In  the  bitterness  of  spirit  to  which  the  war  and 
its  losses  had  given  birth,  many  found  it  hard  to  forgive 
the  men  who,  by  the  attack  on  Fort  Sumter,  had  plunged 


128  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

the  country  into  war.  Many,  too,  found  fault  with  Presi 
dent  Lincoln  because  he  felt  that  the  South  had  suf 
fered  enough,  and  that  the  victors  in  the  awful  strug 
gle  should  yield  to  the  command  of  Scripture,  "Judge 
not,  that  ye  be  not  judged."  Some  of  the  bitter  parti 
sans  in  the  North,  including  Vice-President  Andrew 
Johnson,  were  opposing  any  settlement  with  the  de 
feated  Confederates  which  would  permit  the  pardon  of 
their  leaders  and  the  restoration  to  the  States  of  their 
political  rights  as  a  part  of  the  restored  Union.  The 
President  was  not  one  of  these.  For  the  prostrate  South 
he  had  110  word  of  bitterness.  He  was  a  stranger  to 
hate. 

As  he  had  exposed  himself  day  after  day  to  dangers 
of  all  sorts,  the  fear  for  his  safety  increased.  When  he 
was  approaching  Washington  Mrs.  Lincoln  said  to  him, 
"  The  city  is  filled  with  our  enemies."  But  Lincoln  ex 
claimed,  "  Enemies  !  We  must  never  speak  of  that !  '* 
The  President  was  a  constant  visitor  to  the  hospitals 
where  the  wounded  from  both  armies  were  being  cared 
for  by  the  women  of  the  North.  On  one  of  these  visits 
an  attendant  tried  to  turn  him  aside  by  saying,  "  Those 
patients  are  rebels."  But  he  answered  gently,  "  Not 
rebels,  —  Confederates." 

Peace  came  at  last.  On  Sunday,  the  9th  of  April, 
General  Lee  surrendered  at  Appomattox,  and  with  the 
help  of  Grant,  whose  generosity  in  victory  had  won  the 
admiration  of  the  South,  and  of  Lincoln,  whose  sym 
pathy  for  the  South  in  its  distress  had  won  the  hearts 
of  many  of  his  former  enemies,  he  was  now  ready  to 
44  bind  up  the  nation's  wounds." 

When  the  news  from  Appomattox  reached  Wash 
ington,  the  cabinet  was  in  session  at  the  White  House. 
At  Lincoln's  bidding  they  all  knelt  in  silent  prayer. 


PEACE  129 

Outside,  men,  women,  and  children  thronged  the  pub- 
lie  places.  For  the  first  time  the  voice  of  the  cannon 
proclaimed  good  will  to  men.  Bands  played  in  all  the 
streets.  From  Sunday  until  Friday  the  celebration 
continued.  In  the  South,  the  boys  in  gray,  no  longer 
soldiers,  were  glad  that  with  the  return  of  peace  they 
could  go  back  to  the  hard  work  for  which  they  were 
already  eager  and  to  the  homes  where,  among  those 
they  loved,  they  could  recount  the  story  of  their  strug 
gle  to  uphold  a  hopeless  cause. 

After  the  flight  from  Richmond,  Jefferson  Davis 
and  his  high  officials  had  become  fugitives.  Advice 
was  sought  of  President  Lincoln  regarding  their  cap- 
ture  and  punishment.  He  did  not  seem  interested.  He 
merely  told  a  story  and  suggested  that  if  only  it  could 
be  managed  so  that  these  persons  could  escape  "  unbe 
knownst"  to  him,  it  would  save  a  lot  of  trouble. 

In  the  White  House  grounds  on  Tuesday  evening,  by 
a  common  impulse,  the  happy  crowds  gathered,  eager 
for  a  speech  from  the  President.  They  loved  to  listen 
to  him,  and  they  wanted  to  hear  what  he  would  say 
about  the  South.  As  the  war  drew  near  its  close,  he 
had  been  seeking  a  plan  that  would  secure  forever  the 
results  of  the  war,  freedom  and  union,  and»  at  the  same 
time,  bring  about  the  fulfillment  of  the  hope  he  had 
expressed  at  his  first  inauguration,  that  "  the  mystic 
chords  of  memory  stretching  from  every  battlefield  and 
patriot  grave  would  yet  swell  the  chorus  of  the  Union." 
The  time  had  indeed  come  to  "  bind  up  the  nation's 
wounds."  To  Abraham  Lincoln  this  meant  above  all 
else  generosity  toward  a  defeated  enemy.  He  stood  at 
the  open  window  while  he  made  plain  to  the  crowd  his 
plan  for  restoring  the  old  relations  between  the  States? 
upon  terms  that  no  enemy  of  the  South  would  have 


130  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

dreamed  of  offering.  As  the  bands  played  patriotic 
airs,  the  President  called  for  "  Dixie,"  explaining  to 
the  people  that  the  Attorney-General  had  looked  into 
the  question  and  had  decided  that  "  Dixie  "  was  now 
a  national  air  by  right  of  conquest. 

On  Thursday  night  he  had  a  strange  dream  that  had 
come  to  him  just  before  each  of  the  great  victories  o( 
the  war.  He  dreamed  that  he  was  in  a  mysterious  ves 
sel,  drifting  silently,  rapidly,  toward  an  unknown  shore. 
He  told  the  dream  to  his  cabinet  ministers  and  to 
General  Grant  the  next  morning,  assuring  them  as  he 
told  it  that  they  would  soon  have  news  of  the  sur 
render  of  Johnston's  army,  the  only  remnant  of  the 
Confederate  forces  still  in  arms. 

The  arrival  of  General  Grant  at  Washington  aroused 
popular  enthusiasm  to  its  highest  pitch,  and  brought 
thousands  to  the  city  to  see  the  great  commander  for 
the  first  time.  It  was  arranged  and  advertised  that,  on 
Friday  evening,  Grant  was  to  go  with  the  President 
and  occupy  a  box  at  Ford's  Theatre.  The  city  was 
full  of  strangers,  many  of  them  still  hostile  to  the 
Union.  The  intensity  of  the  war  feeling  led  the 
authorities  to  fear  for  the  safety  of  Grant  and  Lincoln, 
if  they  should  appear  in  public  together.  At  the 
last  moment  Grant  declined  the  invitation.  The  Presi 
dent  did  not  want  to  go,  but  was  loath  to  disap- 
point  the  people.  With  Mrs.  Lincoln  and  two  guests 
he  entered  the  State  Box  at  Ford's  Theatre  at  about 
nine  o'clock.  For  a  moment  the  play  was  stopped.  The 
Audience  rose  to  its  feet,  cheering  and  waving  hats  and 
handkerchiefs  and  flags,  while  the  orchestra  played 
*  Hail  to  the  Chief." 

The  evening  wore  on.  The  tired  President,  happy 
to  forget  his  anxieties  for  an  hour,  became  absorbed  ID 


PEACE  131 

the  play.  Presently  a  young  man  slipped  noiselessly 
into  the  President's  box,  held  a  pistol  to  Lincoln's 
head,  and  fired.  An  instant  later,  the  assassin  leaped  to 
the  stage  and  disappeared.  All  night  long  it  rained 
dismally.  The  startled  nation  dumbly  waited  for  the 
news  that  came  in  the  early  morning.  In  a  forlorn  little 
room  into  which  he  had  been  carried  from  the  theatre, 
Abraham  Lincoln  lay  dead. 

In  the  camps  of  the  Union  armies  and  throughout 
the  North  on  that  Saturday  morning,  the  joy  that 
peace  had  brought  was  turned  to  grief.  Every  home 
in  the  North  was  widowed,  and  even  the  little  children 
cried  in  their  sorrow.  It  was  as  if  one  might  say,  as 
was  said  in  the  midnight  of  Egypt's  sorrow,  "  There 
was  not  a  house  where  there  was  not  one  dead." 

Of  a  great  ruler  who  gave  up  his  life  for  his  people, 
three  centuries  ago,  it  was  said  as  we  may  say  of 
Abraham  Lincoln  :  "  He  went  through  life  bearing  the 
load  of  a  people's  sorrows  upon  his  shoulders,  with  a 
smiling  face.  .  .  .  While  he  lived  he  was  the  guiding 
star  of  a  whole  brave  nation  ;  and  when  he  died  the 
little  children  cried  in  the  streets." 


O  CAPTAIN!   MY  CAPTAIN! 

O  CAPTAIN  !  my  Captain  !  our  fearful  trip  is  done, 

The  ship  has  weathered    every  rack,  the  prize   we    sought  if 

won, 

The  port  is  near,  the  bells  I  hear,  the  people  all  exulting, 
While  follow  eyes  the  steady  keel,  the  vessel  grim  and  daring: 
But  O  heart  !  heart !  heart  ! 

O  the  bleeding  drops  of  red, 
Where  on  the  deck  my  Captain  lies, 
Fallen  cold  and  dead. 


132  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

O  Captain  !  my  Captain  !  rise  up  and  hear  the  bells  ; 

Rise  up  —  for  you  the  flag  is  flung  —  for  you  the  bugle  trills, 

For  you  bouquets  and  ribboned  wreaths  —  for  you  the  shores 

a-crowding, 

For  you  they  call,  the  swaying  mass,  their  eager  faces  turning ; 
Here  Captain  !  dear  father  ! 

This  arm  beneath  your  head  ! 

It  is  some  dream  that  on  the  deck 

You  've  fallen  cold  and  dead. 

My  Captain  does  not  answer,  his  lips  are  pale  and  still, 
My  father  does  not  feel  my  arm,  he  has  no  pulse  nor  will, 
The  ship  is  anchored  safe  and  sound,  its  voyage  closed  and  done, 
From  fearful  trip  the  victor  ship  comes  in  with  object  won  : 
Exult  O  shores,  and  ring  O  bells  ! 

But  I  with  mournful  tread, 
Walk  the  deck  my  Captain  lies, 
Fallen  cold  and  dead. 

WALT  WHITMAN. 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN     INITIAL     FINE     OF     25     CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  5O  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


20 


APR     4    1935 
MAR  141939 


27  T944 
JAN  12  1945 


NOV   21  1648 


lS 


LD  21-20m-fi,'32 


YB  3756T 


[64405 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


